McLaren F1’s new team principal Andrea Stella admits he had more trouble adapting to Pirelli’s new 18-inch F1 tires for 2022 than his rivals.
The switch to 18-inch tires was a big part of this year’s revised F1 technical regulations, but was often overlooked during the season as attention turned to porpoise and the impact of the new rules on aerodynamics.
However, Andrea Stella admits McLaren F1 has not been able to ‘mitigate’ the impact of the new tires as effectively as its rivals.
“Since the introduction of 18-inch tires, the powerful front tires have made the car behave relatively sharply when the car is in a straight line,” said Stella.
“Because the front tires have become so powerful. But the more steering angle you add to the front tires, the more they dampen, and at some stage they dampen very quickly.”
“It’s the same for everyone. If you look at the Pirelli reports, they talk about balance for everyone, and I think it’s usually similar to the same balance that our drivers are commenting on.”
“Adding to that tire car characteristics that mitigate the underlying fundamental behavior of the tire, and depending on how strong that mitigating element is on the car, the available grip becomes more. will be able to utilize
“I definitely think there are some aspects of our car that don’t mitigate this underlying behavior of the tires very well, but in the end I think it’s the same for everyone.”
The consensus in McLaren F1 is that Lando Norris has dealt with the tires better than teammate Daniel Ricciardo.
“There are points where the drivers also play a role in adapting to this,” said Stella.
“And I would say that in the last few years Daniel’s comfort window has been slightly smaller than Lando’s.”
“These traits that I explained earlier affected his performance. If they weren’t showing up much, I think Daniel would actually have been fine from a performance standpoint. These traits were showing up. For some reason, I think this affected his performance.”
“And what we’ve seen is that Lando has a slightly higher ability to deal with that, so the fundamental element is the tires, the car’s characteristics mitigate that, and then a further role on top of that. There is a driver who fulfills
McLaren F1 technical director James Key has agreed that tires are a big issue for teams as they try to optimize their cars.
“Honestly, I could write a book about this,” said James Key.
“We’ve talked a lot about it internally. They’re not weird traits, they’re things you can figure out what’s going on. There’s a big impact on the tyres, everybody has the same problem. there is
“It’s really a case of how well we’re mitigating against it. We’ve debated for a long time whether it’s in certain parts of the processes or tools that we use. Maybe that makes them a little more susceptible to the behavior you’re seeing?”
“I can argue that certain aspects of our car’s behavior are a bit similar to last year, but there are other factors that weren’t there last year, so we’re not in a rut on that particular issue. ”
“By not making the mitigation as strong as possible it just makes it look a little more vulnerable. That’s what we’ve been discussing. I think mechanically we’ve done the best we can. ”
Regarding the drivers, Joms Key said: “As Andrea said, there is definitely an element to driving.
“Again, we may see a bit of this this year as the drivers are trying to get us to where their cars are, and then there are other factors such as aeroloads and aerodynamics.”
“The issues we had last year have been greatly improved with this car. seems to have given
“But I wouldn’t say it’s peculiar, it’s something that all cars suffer from. It works pretty well for us and sometimes it’s not a problem at all, it’s a little more noticeable and we’re looking at the weekend. can become the target of
“So it’s been a long discussion. A lot of research has been done to try to understand what we need to do as a team to be able to better explain it.”
