Why McLaren’s rivals are still puzzling over the secrets of its F1 dominance

When Lotus became the first Formula 1 team to harness ground-effect aerodynamics in the late 1970s, it went to remarkable lengths to keep the secret even though the hardware was almost in plain sight. When removing the 79 car from its transporter and working on it, the mechanics would routinely conceal the differential under a blanket.

This rudimentary piece of misdirection worked, assisted by Mario Andretti dropping meaningful hints about the differential, complex fuel-load management, and various other elements of technical witchcraft. For several seasons Ferrari chief engineer Mauro Forghieri remained convinced that some sort of diff trickery was the root of Lotus’s dominance, hence the Scuderia’s tardy uptake of underbody venturi.

Audiences have grown more sophisticated and technical development more asymptotic, but intrigue over technical matters continues to abide – particularly if there is a belief that one team has found some clever solution others haven’t. For that reason McLaren’s rear brakes have come under close scrutiny as rival teams, most vocally Red Bull, chafed at the MCL39’s apparent superiority.

The trial-by-media continued even after FIA-appointed experts subjected McLaren’s rear brake assemblies to a forensic examination after the Miami Grand Prix and concluded they were within the regulations. Red Bull’s claim was that McLaren had incorporated materials within the brake shrouds which could change from solid to liquid and vice versa depending on temperature.

The capacity of these so-called phase change materials to store and release thermal energy offered a powerful theoretical benefit in terms of managing tyre temperatures. With the current generation of tyres, peak performance arrives within a relatively narrow temperature ‘window’; on either side of that the tyres slide more, inducing degradation.

But the use of innuendo rather than hard fact by rivals suggests they have been unable to replicate this – if indeed McLaren has been doing it at all. The only evidence Red Bull was able to provide was a tranche of thermal images showing McLaren’s rear tyres being cooler than everyone else’s at a particular point.

Traditionally, when one team wants to ‘out’ another one for bending or breaking the rules, the route is to approach the FIA with its own version of that design and seek clarification over whether it is legal or not. The FIA will then copy its response to all the teams. This is how, for instance, McLaren got Ferrari’s ‘sprung floor’ banned in 2007.

Given the budget cap and the imminent change in technical regulations, the other teams have had to think hard on how much resource to plough into unpicking McLaren’s 2025 advantage. It’s clear they were caught out by the extent of the gain: in terms of aero there is no one new component you can add to a car to magically unlock two or three tenths of a second per lap. But tyre performance is a separate issue.  

“McLaren proved all of us wrong,” said Charles Leclerc in his pre-Dutch GP press conference. “I think they were the big surprise of this year.

“We all thought that we had done a step. We all thought that being the last year of those regulations, everybody would be closer, which was the case for Red Bull, Mercedes and ourselves. But McLaren seemed to have found something that we didn’t.

“And fair play to them. They did an incredible job. Now it’s up to us to do a better job and try and catch them. But obviously now it’s kind of late. They’ve got quite a big advantage in the championship and for this year it’s going to be hard.”

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari

Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images

Autosport then asked Leclerc if he could quantify the energy and resource levels going into replicating McLaren’s apparent feat of tyre sorcery, given how much speculation still surrounded how it was actually being done.

“That’s a very good question,” he said. “It’s true to say that the paddock is a very small world. And obviously, there are every year some mechanics, engineers that go from one team to another. So you kind of hear things and then that gives you a direction. And then you try to think in which way can they achieve that.

“But our main job is to try and anticipate that and to be on top of those things, and to be the first ones to lead the development in something that hasn’t been done before. Because if you just follow, then you end up just being second best.

“So I will say there’s not that much energy. But when you have, at the end of an era, a team that does such a step like McLaren did, then it’s obvious that all of the teams are trying to understand what’s going on – what did they find to be so dominant this year. So yeah, it’s in part of our heads. But what we are focusing on is trying to be leading in that development and trying to find ourselves the solutions that nobody found yet.”

Leclerc has a point, but it would be foolish to ignore a development simply because someone else got there first. F1 history is rich in case histories of teams who squandered first-mover advantage (including Lotus, beaten by teams such as Williams who harnessed ground effect more usefully), or who failed to copy innovations but prevailed in the end by getting them banned. You can learn a lot by looking at what others are doing – regardless of the chicanery and misdirection they might indulge in.

“There’s a lot of gamesmanship that takes place when cars are held on what we call the dummy grid before a race,” wrote Adrian Newey in his autobiography.

Adrian Newey, Managing Technical Partner of Aston Martin F1 on the grid

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images via Getty Images

“Engineers such as myself take the opportunity to have a look at other cars. Mechanics, when they see a senior engineer from an opposing team – e.g. me – in the vicinity, will swarm around their car, attempting to obscure the bit I’m looking at.

“Ferrari, in particular, are a veritable hive of activity when I wander in their direction. As a result, what I do is amble towards a section of the car I’m not particularly interested in, thus attracting the mechanics my way, like bees to honey, while one of our photographers snaps away at the bit I really want to see. Ferrari still haven’t rumbled that one…”