{"id":12007,"date":"2025-04-11T22:33:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T22:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/12007\/"},"modified":"2025-04-11T22:33:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T22:33:10","slug":"mclaren-disparages-talk-of-teams-f1-dominance-as-out-of-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/12007\/","title":{"rendered":"McLaren disparages talk of team’s F1 dominance as “out of place”"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a weekend where Formula 1\u2019s future has dominated the news agenda, one matter of the here and now has cut through the noise: the degree to which the McLaren<\/a> MCL39 is the dominant car and how the team has achieved this.<\/p>\n

Despite Max Verstappen<\/a>\u2019s win at Suzuka last weekend against Red Bull\u2019s run of form, McLaren remains the favourite this weekend even though Bahrain has been its bogey circuit in recent years. But team principal Andrea Stella pushed back against such assumptions, and even suggested that rival teams are exaggerating McLaren\u2019s superiority for their own purposes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the margins are very small, they keep being small,\u201d said Stella. \u201cIf we look in China in qualifying it was a bit of a mixed bag, Japan in qualifying we got beaten \u2013 and in the race we got beaten.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I think we have to be quite realistic as to the situation in terms of performance. I hear [people] sometimes talking about \u2018dominance\u2019, which I think is out of place.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hear the talk about dominance sometimes pronounced by our competitors. Clearly everyone knows their game, knows how to put pressure or how to attempt to put pressure on their rivals, but we\u2019re very grounded people, we\u2019re very calm.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not going to [take] this kind of bait. We know we have to work hard to exploit the potential of the MCL39 and we have to work hard to keep improving the car.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lando <\/p>\n

Lando Norris, McLaren, Andrea Stella, McLaren<\/p>\n

Photo by: Clive Rose \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Although Lewis Hamilton<\/a> won the sprint race in China, McLaren\u2019s Oscar Piastri<\/a> won the grand prix from pole position \u2013 a week after Lando Norris<\/a> won from pole in Australia. Talk of McLaren exploiting aero-elasticity to boost straightline performance has been rife since the middle of last season, and prompted the FIA to introduce more stringent new static-load tests.<\/p>\n

Wings cannot be completely rigid: a degree of flex under load is inevitable. But it is also possible to exploit the properties of the composite materials to deliberately engineer a certain degree of flex under particular conditions to achieve an aerodynamic benefit.<\/p>\n

The governing body announced a further tightening up of the permitted tolerances after the Australian Grand Prix but, even though McLaren passed these, the innuendo has continued. An amateur sleuth\u2019s comparison of footage from the McLaren and Red Bull rear-facing cameras in Suzuka gained traction when it was boosted on social media by Verstappen\u2019s father Jos.<\/p>\n

Although Verstappen won in Japan, this was principally the result of a scintillating qualifying lap on a day neither McLaren driver quite delivered when it counted. In the race, the track layout militated against overtaking and the tyres proved too durable to provide strategic opportunities.<\/p>\n

Stella denied that McLaren had become complacent and been caught out on the day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t need any wake-up call because we weren\u2019t sleeping,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we weren\u2019t dreaming.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know if we don\u2019t capitalise on the full performance of the car then we will be beaten \u2013 and if we capitalise then we may win by a very small margin. These are the conversations that happen within the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photos from Bahrain GP – Practice<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

In this article<\/p>\n

Stuart Codling\n<\/p>\n

Formula 1\n<\/p>\n

McLaren\n<\/p>\n

Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n

Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a weekend where Formula 1\u2019s future has dominated the news agenda, one matter of the here and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4293,4202,4199,707,4200,1710,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-12007","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-bahrain-gp","9":"tag-bahrain-international-circuit","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-mclaren","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114321713030591023","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}