McLaren is back amongst Formula 1’s biggest teams. At least, temporarily and statistically.
Two races into the 2020 Formula 1 season and McLaren lies second in the constructors’ championship with a podium finish and a 100% scoring rate across both drivers, something only Mercedes can match.
A McLaren has started third in each of the opening grands prix, demonstrating impressive peak performance in its car, and Lando Norris has launched late-race charges in both races to earn plaudits by the bucket-loads.
It was, by almost any measure, a brilliant two weeks at the Red Bull Ring for McLaren. But as F1 shifts its attention to the Hungarian Grand Prix and a different challenge, focus must turn to whether McLaren can sustain this start.
“We had a good first two weekends of the year but I think they’re probably going to get tougher from now on,” Norris said after the Styrian Grand Prix.
“I don’t even think we have the fourth-best car, I think you have Mercedes, Red Bull, Racing Point. I think Ferrari are going to be a lot stronger the next few weekends.
“I think we made the best opportunity of this track, where it suits our car and we’re very strong, but it’s going to get very tough the next few weekends.”
There will be degradation no doubt. By this coming Sunday evening, McLaren will likely be back behind Red Bull in the championship. Yet its ambition should be to avoid falling further.
McLaren’s current position is flattered to a degree by circumstances, it’s true. But Norris is downplaying its prospects. McLaren should aim to beat Ferrari this season on merit.
Car performance
Ferrari has a Q3-marginal car at the moment, as evidenced by one of its drivers being knocked out in Q2 at both Red Bull Ring races. Even if we take Ferrari’s evident qualifying engine mode weakness out of the equation and allow for stronger performances on less power-sensitive circuits, that’s no guarantee it will suddenly leap clear of the others.
Its car is clearly flawed because it’s not the benchmark in the corners either. In the wet, Ferrari struggled. Sebastian Vettel complained of getting temperature in his tyres and that could be many things, but it wasn’t an issue McLaren suffered.
In fact, McLaren’s raw pace looks really strong. Circumstances have presented the opportunity for both Norris and Carlos Sainz Jr to each start a race from third on the grid, and Norris’s late-race charges in both grands prix add further weight to the theory that the McLaren’s potent on low fuel.
That Sainz was third-fastest in the wet also bodes well for the McLaren’s fundamental performance, suggesting it is working well mechanically and aerodynamically.
And while the Racing Points had blistering pace at times, with Sergio Perez even faster than Valtteri Bottas’s Mercedes at some stages, Sainz was actually quite confident he’d have finished ahead without the pitstop problem that compromised his race.
“With a normal race we should’ve been able to stay ahead the whole race,” he insisted. “We just didn’t do it, so it meant they got ahead of us after the pitstops and then we couldn’t really fight them.
“It should’ve been an easy P5 today for me, after controlling the midfield in the first stint.”
We’ll come onto that lingering McLaren weakness shortly, but the Racing Point comparison is important. Racing Point, not Ferrari, might end up being McLaren’s biggest short-term threat.
The controversial ‘pink Mercedes’ is a rapid machine but a critic of Racing Point’s approach, holding a glass they consider half-full, would praise McLaren’s new technical structure headed by James Key for building a car that looks a match for last year’s title-winning machine.
McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl doesn’t think it looks that good for McLaren just yet but with a good platform and developments in the pipeline it has every reason to think it can go toe to toe with Racing Point and Ferrari all season.
“It’s just a fact that this one-year-old Mercedes is simply a quick car, which is operated by a great team,” said Seidl of the Racing Point.
“And we know that the development we did over the winter we didn’t make the step to get to last year’s Mercedes, so if they extract the potential of this car it’s difficult for us to compete.
“Therefore it’s very important for us to simply make sure we keep developing our car, to keep improving it, and at the same time to maximise the opportunities which we did now in the first two races.”
Norris’s ‘big step’ is evident
Seidl said those results have been earned because of the efforts of “two great drivers” and on the evidence of the first two races Norris has definitely edged into that category.
He had a fine rookie season tinged with some lapses in concentration or slightly sub-par weekends, but generally compared favourably to his much more experienced team-mate.
The question was whether he would make the step required to produce consistent, strong performance. That is a complex thing to manage, as drivers have to handle a lot of data, work with their engineers, extract the peak of the tricky Pirelli tyres in qualifying but manage them with a gentle touch in the races, and then execute in battle too.
Norris’s podium in the season opener and last-lap charge to fifth in round two was emphatic proof that, in Seidl’s words, yes – a “great step” has been made.
“He made the right conclusions of what was not that strong yet last year on his side,” said Seidl.
“He mentions himself that not always in the races last year he performed at the optimum where he thinks he could have been.
“Analysing it afterwards and looking at these first two races now, it seems that he could do it.
“He made a good step forward and obviously having two great drivers, being there performing, is key, in our fight in the championship.”
Norris now looks like a driver with a touch of magic to make good things happen in races. He ran a long first stint, sacrificing some performance early on to make the tyres last, then drove very effectively once onto the mediums.
As ex-F1 driver and BBC pundit Jolyon Palmer said, overtaking another driver at the very final corner of the race suggests Norris extracted everything possible out of it.
“It was a fun race,” said Norris. “Probably my best race that I’ve done in Formula 1. I’m very happy with today.”
Sainz is proving his Ferrari credentials
While Norris, deservedly, was lavished with praise across two weekends in Austria, spare a thought for the underrated efforts of Sainz.
He was a fine fifth in the opener, and could have very easily beaten Norris had the Briton not got his elbows out before his late charge. Norris was at risk of spiralling after losing a place to Charles Leclerc then making a series of mistakes that almost allowed Sainz past.
The Styrian GP then should have been Sainz’s time to shine but after a brilliant qualifying performance and strong first stint he was undermined by a slow pitstop, which Seidl was very, very sorry for.
It shouldn’t detract from two very good performances that Sainz’s current team boss thinks proves why Ferrari has signed him for 2021.
“We simply sent him back out in the wrong position where he destroyed his tyres,” said Seidl.
“With Carlos I think we have seen in the qualifying that there is a reason why other teams have been interested in him in the winter, and actually took him.
“And the same was valid for the first weekend. We know he’s a great racer, that he’s doing a great job on track but also off track in terms of working together with the team and together with the engineers in terms of developing the car.”
Sainz is moving to Ferrari next season because Ferrari thinks he’s a better option than Sebastian Vettel. And with Norris moving towards the sort of level that has made Charles Leclerc a race winner at Ferrari, this is a huge boost for McLaren’s 2020 prospects.
It has a driver line-up that is not just an upgrade on Racing Point’s (Perez and Lance Stroll), but arguably as good as Ferrari’s. Sainz’s role there shouldn’t be underestimated.
“That’s why it’s a pity that it didn’t work out for him to get a deserved P5 purely down to his own performance,” said Seidl.
Strategy and execution looks good
If we ignore Sainz’s botched pitstop (but not completely because we are getting to that, honest) then McLaren did a superb job to maximise its opportunities in Austria.
Circumstances put it at risk of being beaten by Racing Point in the first race but Norris’s aggressive battling and an aggressive strategy/bit of coaching from the team in the final lap and a half launched him from fifth on the road to sneaking a podium by two tenths of a second.
The instructions Norris got after taking advantage of the Stroll/Daniel Ricciardo moment were similarly crucial to him being able to catch and pass Perez at the final corner in race two.
Having earned track position in qualifying McLaren set out its stall to keep it and were it not for other circumstances it would have done so. The fact it was then able to opportunistically wrest back the positions it lost bode well for its ability to react to adversity.´
“The Racing Points are way too quick for us,” said Norris after the race.
“When someone extracts all of the pace of the car, like Sergio, then I think he showed how fast their car is.
“I’m not really expecting that we have much of a chance against them when they don’t make mistakes – but once again, like last weekend, we made the most of our opportunities.”
There is also the element of McLaren being very quick to deploy team orders where necessary, and for the two drivers to respect it – even though Sainz would have been furious at his race being compromised by a team error.
But had Norris not been let past when he was, he’d likely never have caught and passed Ricciardo, Stroll and Perez. Renault hesitated when faced with its own team-orders dilemma earlier in the race. And we all know how difficult Ferrari finds enforcing team orders.
“I have to say well done to our two drivers, seeing great teamwork on track,” Seidl said.
“It was clear that Carlos destroyed his tyres after we sent him in heavy traffic after the delayed pitstop. Lando had the better momentum with the better tyres.
“He was in better shape than and it was nice to see that both guys, with the interests they have for themselves, understand that in the end it’s for achieving the best results for the team.”
This could be a powerful weapon for McLaren to have in a very tight midfield.
Pitstops need improving
For all the positives, the glaring problem was the pitstop problem that hurt Sainz’s race irreparably.
Pitstops were McLaren’s undoing at times last year and the team has made efforts to rectify that. Seidl said it was small comfort that Sainz wasn’t released with a loose wheel because of the new procedure in place to stop an unsafe release.
But for all McLaren’s opportunism, if it does indeed have a slower car than Ferrari and Racing Point it will need to put all the other pieces of the puzzle together.
Pitstops are a crucial component in a grand prix and this weakness will be ruthlessly exposed if McLaren doesn’t get on top of that.
“Of course we need to look into the issue we had in the pitstop,” said Seidl.
“Our ambition must be to be more consistent with our pitstop timing and faster overall.
“That’s something we know we have to work on and simply confirms that we have a lot to improve as a team.”
There’s a lot to like about this iteration of McLaren and operationally it is getting sharper and sharper as it moves up the grid.
If Ferrari gets its act together, the pressure to hold onto ‘best of the rest’ behind Mercedes and Red Bull will be immense. There’s no doubt worse days are to come for McLaren, and potentially weekends where event scoring points is a challenge.
But emerging from that third in the championship is not a forlorn hope. Yes, neither the 17-point advantage over Racing Point or 20-point gap to Ferrari is insurmountable with only two races run, but McLaren has that buffer for a reason.
Two strong drivers and a fast qualifying car is a potent combination given track position is very important in F1.
If McLaren can marry that with strong development and continue to race opportunistically on days it is not the fastest in the midfield, these highlights in Austria don’t just have to be the exception to the rule.
And if it falls short, at least giving it a red-hot go will boost McLaren massively in its quest to be back amongst F1’s biggest teams for more than just a couple of grands prix.
