It looked a pretty sobering weekend for McLaren to be so far off the pace after being the best car the last couple of years. Is it realistic to hope they can compete this year or is being best of the rest, as Lando Norris was in Melbourne, the best they will be able to do? – Tom
The fastest McLaren in Australia qualified more than 0.8 seconds slower than George Russell’s pole time, and Norris finished the race 51 seconds behind Russell.
McLaren – world champions for the past two years – admitted their car was not quite on the level of the Mercedes. As team principal Andrea Stella put it: “When we look at the GPS overlays, we see that Mercedes is faster in some of the corners.”
But the vast majority of McLaren’s deficit was down to usage of the power unit and the energy recovery system.
It’s clear the works team has more knowledge of how to get the most out of the engine, and it’s equally clear that, with software systems so complex, more information and knowledge translates into a significant advantage on track.
In Melbourne, the Mercedes cars were able to deploy a significant amount more energy on the long run from Turn Six to Turn Nine, where much of the lap
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