Visualizing the airflow around McLaren's sidepods! 👀 (Collab with @justf1car)

Among all teams, McLaren improved the most year after year, but also throughout each season.

Their development path has been clear, reliable, and extremely effective.

Example: Best McL Quali Lap - Hungary
Top speed / T4 min. speed / T9 min. speed
-2022: 309km/h / 236km/h / 153km/h
-2023: 312 (+3) / 248 (+12) / 157 (+4)
-2024: 313 (+1) / 247 (-1) / 166 (+9)

McL qualified P4 in 2022 already (+0.394s from pole); it further improved to P3 in 2023 (+0.085s) and to front-row lockout in 2024.

Since 2022 they gained +4km/h of top speed, +11km/h in T4 and +13km/h in T9: much more downforce while reducing drag at the same time! (Starting from a second-row-capable car).

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REAR WINGS - Belgian GP

Low- to medium-low downforce, to be quick in the long and uphill full-throttle sections. 🚀

Teams hope that their floor itself produces enough downforce to be quick in Sector 2! 🛞

🔼Most loaded: RedBull/Aston
🔽Least loaded: Ferrari/McL/RacingB/Merc

📸: @AlbertFabrega

It's still FP1, but VER is already looking like the clear favourite for pole (but he has a 10 places grid penalty).

Red Bull is using a much less loaded rear wing than last year: despite that, VER already took T11 full-throttle (289km/h)! 😳

He was 0.53s/lap quicker than PIA despite losing ~0.3s on the main full-throttle section alone (due to a much lower engine mode). His top speed was similar to PIA, however, thanks to the RB20's lower drag.

Compared to McL, the RB20 seems to have less drag (expected) and possibly more downforce (unexpected). And VER did 1:43.37 (0.9s faster than the '22 pole) using a very detuned engine mode...

LONG RUNS (FP2)

McLaren was quickest on both compounds:
-By 0.231s/lap on Mediums (NOR vs SAI)
-By 1.042s/lap (!) on Softs (PIA vs LEC)

McLaren's high-ish drag might hold them down a bit in qualifying, but their high downforce will make them the car to beat in the race!

🥇McL
🥈Ferrari
🥉RedBull (probably higher fuel / lower engine mode)
4️⃣Mercedes
5️⃣Aston

What's YOUR prediction? 🤔

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I won't be home today (going to a Medieval re-enactment / Fantasy convention in the historical town of Vinci, to relax a bit!)
So I will post the general qualifying analysis early tomorrow morning and will analyse some interesting bits next week.

Stay tuned, and enjoy quali!🏎🏁

Ocon did a great job reaching Q3 in the wet using a very skinny rear wing! (Which will pay dividends in the dry race)

Conversely, Mercedes' and Aston's lack of top speed (due to a more loaded rear wing) should disadvantage them in the race

What's your prediction? 👀

Mercedes’ disastrous FP2 long runs prompted them to drop the updated floor (which caused bouncing): pace came back, leading to an unbelievable 1-2!

Kudos to RUS for conceiving and achieving a 1-stopper: their more loaded wing helped with the deg

6 drivers and 4 teams within 10s!
Fantastic race 🔥

And I don’t believe I was the only one who immediately thought ‘Alfa Romeo!’ any time an Alpine was shown 🤣

🥇Hamilton had the best pace, Russell the best tyre wear: Mercedes beat everyone through two radically different strategies!💡
W15 was both fast and kind on its tyres.👌

🥈PIA just 0.03s/lap slower than HAM.
🥉VER 0.17s/lap off.

LEC was quicker than NOR, who was often in traffic.

RUS has been disqualified from the Belgian GP, as his car was found to be 1.5kg below the mandated minimum (796.5kg vs 798kg).

Such a difference is worth around ~0.05s/lap on a track like Spa, or slightly above 2s over a race distance. ⏱

After FP2, the team replaced the car’s new floor with the previous-spec one, as the former was inducing some severe bouncing: could the old floor have been lighter, and the team forgot to add appropriate ballast to his car after swapping them?

How much performance was Russell's 'missing mass' worth? 🤔

No more than 2.2s, but at least 0.4s, depending on whether it was missing since the start (e.g. wrong ballast), or due to high tyre wear.

- First case: he would have gained around half a tenth per lap, on all 44 laps: worth 2.2s over the race distance.

- Second case: he did 16 laps more on Hards than HAM, so we assume he lost that additional 1.5kg in the last 16 laps. If that case, his pace advantage would have grown from null on Lap 26 up to 0.05s on Lap 44: the time gained would have been far less (just 0.4s).

All else being equal, HAM would have caught him 3 laps sooner (Lap 38 instead of 41) in the first case, and 1 lap sooner (Lap 40) in the second case.

Stroll strongly complained about his straight-line speed, yet he set the highest top speed in the race🤔

The reason?

When in free air his top speed was low indeed. As he couldn't overtake, he got a powerful tow while using DRS, reaching 356km/h.

Ocon's low-drag wing worked: he was fastest on average, and never below 317km/h at the end of Kemmel.🚀

LEC was the only driver who didn't use DRS: that's why his best speed was 'just' 326km/h.💡

Made via @JMP_software

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In FP2, Verstappen tested a (budget-friendly) lower-drag wing, but he went back to the more loaded one for the GP.💡

RedBull sawed the DRS plane to reduce its drag: this is an inefficient solution, used to save the money needed to design an entirely new wing. 💰

The top speed gain was:
- Moderate (4km/h) when the DRS was closedé
- Very modest (2km/h) when the DRS was active, as the upper plane's drag is minimal in these conditions anyway!

VER lost 5km/h to PER in the fast Pohoun corner, where he was quicker on most laps on the same setup: the downforce loss was deemed excessive, and they used the more loaded option for the race. 🚫

Maybe we'll see it again in Monza!

(Values from two long-run laps very close in laptime; Photo by @lukemotorsport)

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