McLaren’s ‘fundamental design’ lessons learned after Red Bull defeat

Coming up short against Max Verstappen at Monza, Andrea Stella believes McLaren’s first defeat in six races highlights a fundamental design difference between the RB21 and the MCL39 in low drag conditions.

Formula 1 headed to the Temple of Speed for round 16 of the championship with McLaren on a five-race winning streak as the team tightened its stranglehold on the championship double.

McLaren: There’s certainly a lesson to be learned

Verstappen surprised in qualifying when, having stuck to his guns of his RB21’s setup which included an ultra-trimmed rear wing, the Red Bull driver claimed pole position by 0.077s ahead of Lando Norris.

The reigning World Champion revealed “some” people within the team had doubted his setup choice.

“Before qualifying, some people within the team wanted to try something else with the setup, but I said: ‘No, we shouldn’t do that,'” said Verstappen. “When I walked back to my room, I could still see some faces and a few people doubting that setup direction.

“But I just felt: ‘This is what we need to do’ – and luckily it worked out.”

But the big question was: would it work out in the race?

The setup reportedly made the RB21 more difficult to drive, even if it did improve top speed.

Lining up ahead of Norris, Verstappen held onto the lead by cutting the chicane and had to cede the lead to the Briton.

But instead of the McLaren scampering off into the distance, Verstappen was able to stick to Norris’ rear wing and regain the lead a few laps later.

Even more of a surprise than his pole position, he was the one who could pull away.

Building his advantage almost every lap, Verstappen took the chequered flag 19.2s ahead of Norris to secure his first grand prix win since May’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

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Stella, noting Red Bull’s aerodynamic efficiency in low drag conditions, admits McLaren did not see that coming even if the team wasn’t expecting another dominant win.

Although he didn’t go into details, he reckons it may have something to do with the different design philosophy between McLaren and Red Bull.

“I have to admit that while we were expecting not to be as dominant as we were in Hungary and Zandvoort. We did not expect to have this kind of gap to any of our competitors,” Stella told PlanetF1.com’s Thomas Maher and other publications after the Italian Grand Prix.

“We thought we would still be potentially, hopefully, as competitive, as fast as anybody else.

“But we have to admit that yesterday [qualifying] Red Bull were one or two tenths faster than us.

“And probably today [the race] they were a little bit more than that faster than us, considering that Verstappen was in condition to overtake Lando, and considering how much he was opening the gap in the first stint.

“There may be some technical reasons why that is the case.

“I think we have seen that anytime Red Bull have gone on a low level of drag, so a small rear wings, they seem to retain a lot of aerodynamic efficiency.

“We design our car not in this regime, but in a different regime.

“But this tends to follow a trend that we also had last year.

“So I think for us, in terms of fundamental design, there’s certainly a lesson to be learned because we don’t want to be competitive only in a certain category of circuits. We want to be competitive in all circuits.”

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