McLaren’s ‘sneaky’ trick as Ferrari breaks the ‘number one’ rule – James Hinchcliffe
McLaren's 'sneaky' trick as Ferrari breaks the 'number one' rule
James Hinchcliffe says Ferrari broke the “number one rule of engineering” when it brought 11 new parts to the Miami Grand Prix, making it difficult to isolate why the SF-26 didn’t have the expected pace.
In contrast, McLaren settled for just seven new updates, which the former IndyCar star reckons may have been a deliberate “sneaky” decision by team principal Andrea Stella.
James Hinchcliffe Ferrari engineering rule broken in Miami
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Trailing Mercedes in the opening rounds of the championship, Ferrari arrived at the Miami International Autodrome with a host of new parts for the SF-26 – 11 in total.
Amongst the changes, the team introduced a new floor and diffuser, while also revising the ‘Macarena’ rear wing to improve drag reduction and focus on increasing load in cornering mode.
The Scuderia had the most new parts of any team, but it wasn’t alone in upgrading the car with McLaren bringing seven new parts to the track.
The MCL40 was fitted with a new floor, revised engine cover, front and rear corner, and a new rear wing amongst other parts.
McLaren not only claimed victory in the Sprint but also secured a double podium behind Kimi Antonelli, knocking Ferrari off the podium for the first time this season.
Although Ferrari did make performance gains, McLaren’s were bigger.
Now well into the team’s post-race analysis, Hinchcliffe says Ferrari may have done itself a disservice by introducing so many new parts as it won’t be easy isolating which one, and if it was even just one, didn’t work as expected.
The former IndyCar star told the F1 Nation podcast: “This is the number one rule of engineering is make one change at a time, so you can isolate what’s actually better and worse.
“They don’t have that freedom, with no testing and a single practice session.
“You’re bolting on 11 or 12 different components, and it really makes the job for the engineers difficult. It really makes the job for the drivers difficult to isolate what’s helping, what’s changing, what’s hurting.
“This, that or the other. And all of these things work together, nothing is working in isolation on a Formula 1 car.
“It’s massively challenging to bring such a large list of upgrades.
“So whether or not they maximised the potential of the car over the weekend, maybe, maybe not. I think they were doing a great job of maximising the car they had for the race until the spin at the end.”
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Although McLaren was second on the list, tied with Red Bull, for the most new parts, Hinchcliffe reckons the reigning world champions deliberately limited the number of parts they brought to the track.
That, he says, would not only allow McLaren further development time but also make it easier to understand which, if any, part wasn’t performing as expected.
“It’s one of those sneaky things that you could see masterminded by Andrea Stella,” he said. “He’s one of those guys that would like, ‘Yeah, we could have had all this done, we could delay these few parts, actually give ourselves another couple days to develop them’.
“And every engineer will tell you every extra day that you can develop it before you create it, before you produce it, could find a little bit more performance.
“And then the knock-on effect is we can do a little bit better job of isolating what’s really performing well.”
Scoring 48 points in Miami, McLaren made gains on both championship leaders Mercedes and second-placed Ferrari, who the Woking team trails by 16 points. Mercedes is 86 ahead of McLaren.
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