McLaren ‘on the back foot’ understanding Mercedes power unit after Australia

Lando Norris has said McLaren has to figure out some critical factors regarding its Mercedes power unit usage, following Andrea Stella’s admission that his team is “on the back foot” compared to the factory team.

Mercedes powers three customer teams alongside the factory squad, but McLaren, Williams, and Alpine did not achieve the same level of competitiveness at the season opener in Australia.

Lando Norris explains McLaren Mercedes power unit challenge

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While Mercedes scored a 1-2 finish in qualifying and the race in Melbourne, the next-nearest Mercedes-powered car was in fifth, as Lando Norris came home over 50 seconds behind George Russell.

In a season in which the power unit regulations have been revolutionised, the factory team having a better understanding of how to get the most out of the new units isn’t surprising, and McLaren boss Andrea Stella admitted to feeling at a disadvantage as a customer team following the Melbourne round.

“I have to say, since we are a customer team, this is the first time that we feel we are on the back foot,” he said.

“Even when it comes to the ability to predict how the car will behave, and the ability to anticipate how we can improve the car.

An example of understanding the power units is in the area of energy deployment, with Mercedes having the tools to figure out the optimal way around a circuit in terms of where to lift-and-coast, where and for how long to implement super-clipping, and the most beneficial places to utilise the battery boost.

“I can say that we spent a lot of time looking at several overlays, not only, obviously, with HPP teams, in particular Mercedes, but also to other competitors,” Stella said.

“The result of this analysis seem to direct to the fact that we have work to do as a team in collaboration with our HPP engineers.

“We have work to do to exploit the potential of the power unit, which, once I see the potential that HPP is extracting, looks like there’s more that is available.

“Now, it’s not obvious how you do that. For us, we are in a journey of knowledge. Certainly, a journey that is earlier than their works team.

“The works team and HPP will have worked together for a long time. So they will have collaborated and talked about how to use the power unit. That’s fair enough. But we will definitely intensify the collaboration with HPP, because our understanding is that there is some low-hanging fruit.”

As reigning World Champion, Norris’ title defence could hinge on McLaren’s understanding of the power unit being of a similar level to Mercedes, and the British driver said it’s clear McLaren still has plenty of work to do in that regard, as Mercedes isn’t required to coach McLaren through everything.

The regulations require Mercedes, as a power unit manufacturer through High-Performance Powertrains [HPP], to supply identical hardware and software to every customer, with the regulations stating that the power units must be “capable of being operated in precisely the same way”, while software calibrations associated with the engine oil and fuel must also be identical.

But Mercedes isn’t required to coach McLaren on the fine minutiae of performance-related understanding, and it’s in this area that the Woking-based squad must do some extra work, Norris said.

“I mean, we always do that,” he said of conversations with HPP and whether his team will be working more closely with the power unit engineers this weekend in China.

“We’ve worked very closely ever since, and they’ve helped us achieve the last couple of championships together. So it’s certainly not like that’s not the case already.

“It’s just, early on in the season, there’s just a lot of things to try and figure out and understand, and it’s just that it’s not told; certain things don’t need to be told, because you always try and create your own advantages.

“But, at the same time, there are certain things that we have to figure out for ourselves.

“I don’t know what the rules are and what has to be said or not, and those kinds of things, that’s down to Andrea and the rest of the team, but we’ve always worked closely. We’ll continue to do it.

“As much as you know, he said some of these things, there were still a lot of things that we just didn’t explore and maximise ourselves. So that’s kind of irrelevant at the same time, that if we just do a better job ourselves and maximise data and figure it out earlier, we would just do better anyway.”

With McLaren not being given the latest specification power unit until the start of the Australian Grand Prix weekend, meaning it tested using a previous-spec engine, Norris said McLaren has asked for the opportunity to be better-prepared.

“The fact that we didn’t have the newer power unit at an earlier point meant that we’re always going to be on the back foot compared to a team that’s performing extremely well,” he said.

“That’s a lot more prepared than we are able to be.

“I guess we just want to be able to be more prepared. And that’s the main thing we’ve asked for.”

Over the winter, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff spoke of a future intent to reduce customer supply by at least one team, referring to McLaren as the “enemy in the house” as he said that the success of a customer team with Mercedes power is not of interest for anyone in his organisation.

“The raison detre for HPP is to win World Championships with the works team,” he said.

“This is Mercedes but, in order to make the economies work and also to use it as a test bench and a comparison to the works team, it’s good that we have the customer supply situation.

“Nobody else is interested in some kind of customer success outside of our little micro cosmos. It is the Mercedes team, and then there is the McLaren team, and then there is the Williams team, and that’s something that we always bear in mind.”

Given the obvious reluctance to be beaten again by a customer team, are there any feelings within McLaren that Mercedes is holding back or failing to give its customers everything expected of a customer supply agreement?

“I think we get everything that we want,” Norris said.

“I certainly don’t think there’s any of that. I think we’re very happy, we just delayed on all these processes, and therefore not being able to be as prepared as just what we want to be.

“It’s as simple as that, and we’re playing catch-up at round one rather than saying, ‘Yeah, we feel like we’ve nailed everything. Why is there still a gap?’

“There’s a big gap. And we’re figuring out things along the way, which is too late in the world of Formula 1. So it’s none of that stuff.

“It’s just when you’re in a world of preparation, when you don’t feel prepared, and you’re finding out things along the way, that’s just not the position you want.”

More on Mercedes power unit

Toto Wolff defends Mercedes customer approach amid McLaren and Williams confusion
McLaren spots ‘lot of lap time’ still available after Mercedes qualifying dominance

Having finished so far behind Mercedes at the first round, McLaren heads to the Chinese Grand Prix facing a very different challenge on the energy front. With Melbourne being one of the most difficult tracks to recoup energy, Shanghai is easier in that regard, and Norris said he expects the learning from Albert Park to result in a more competitive weekend for his squad.

“I hope and also expect it to be a bit closer,” he said.

“I think Melbourne was also one of the trickiest tracks of the season, we expect, from a power unit point of view, in terms of lift and coasting, and a lot of factors at play, from that side of things.

“There’s less of that here, so it should be a little bit simpler. And therefore, we expect to be a bit closer, even if we were to go back to Melbourne, I think we would expect to be closer, anyway, from what we’ve understood and been able to learn and figure out.

“But, at the same time, we also know we have to improve in all areas. It’s not just the power unit: just the car itself.

“It’s decent. We’re in a good starting position, but we still want it to be better than what it is currently. So there are two sides, and the car is a little bit maybe more long-term stuff from that side of it, but from a power unit point of view, we expect to be closer and more up to the performance of Mercedes, which is just a very, very high level.

“They’re doing better than everyone, including us, and there’s a lot that is down to us doing a better job at the same time, so we expect to do that this weekend.”

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