McLaren is Red Bull's first challenger. To consolidate this role, in Austria, Woking updated the MCL38 with a view to remaining in the wake of the RB20. The technicians worked on a seemingly small change to the front wing.
In reality, what the engineers were trying to achieve is something much more substantial. That is, resolving a conflict that characterizes the machines of this generation: maintain a constant balance between low and high speed corners.
The natural characteristic of a Formula 1 car is to have understeer at low speed and oversteer at high speed. The current rules have exacerbated this characteristic. Today's constraints mean that the tunnels that feed the Venturi Canals are far behind what happened with the ground-effect cars of the 1980s.
This nature means that it is complex to find the balance between the load generated by the front end and that produced by the rear part of the single-seater. If at low speed the rear axle produces more load, things change as the speed increases.
As the car compresses on the suspension and the downforce aligns with the speed, the front wing gets closer to the ground and, just like the bottom of the car, begins to work according to the ground effect generating more downforce.
![McLaren MCL38](https://www.formulacritica.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/NOR-jpg.webp)
The center of aerodynamic pressure (the aerodynamic equivalent of weight distribution) moves forward as speed increases, giving the car oversteer behavior. In recent years, teams have discovered that they tend to have front wings that are not effective enough at low speed (when understeer occurs) but which are, conversely, too good at high speed, when oversteer occurs.
The goal of the technicians is to make the front wing lose some of the vertical thrust that is produced at high speed (hence the constant search for ways to make the wings flex) and to have a more energized flow at low speed .
The new front wing that McLaren brought to Spielberg differs from the old one mainly in that the blades are much more “twisted” on the inner side of the endplates. This is with the aim of energizing the low speed air flow.
At higher speeds the new configuration presented by the technicians intends to contain the increase in load. Which, in general terms, increases the performance of the wing more at low speed than at high speed. The team principal of McLaren, Andrea Stella, confirmed that this is the desired direction for the development of the MCL38's front wing
![Andrea Stella - McLaren](https://www.formulacritica.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Andrea-Stella-jpg.webp)
McLaren MCL38: Andrea Stella satisfied with the development line undertaken
“Especially with this generation of car and this generation of front wing regulations, the geometries are very limited. Therefore it is difficult to get what you want at low speed/high steering angles compared to what you want in a straight line, or what you want at high speed”.
“This is a challenge that I'm sure all teams are facing and that's also why it's quite difficult to bring development to a front wing. We therefore hope that the compromise we are working on will be able to offer some advantage at low speed, but without affecting too negatively high speed or straight line”.
“This is a development direction of what we introduced with the front wing that we brought to Miami. We saw that concept worked well, so we wanted to explore it further. This is another attempt to improve the car's low-speed behavior“, Stella closed to the official F1 website.
McLaren, therefore, has identified a clear evolutionary line that it is pursuing with great care to avoid forcing its hand and finding results opposite to those desired. A bit', mutatis mutandis, what happened in Ferrari with the package introduced in Barcelona which has not yet produced the desired results.
Crediti foto: McLaren