McLaren uncover the Red Bull secret currently keeping them out of reach

McLaren has made great strides in F1 2023 to reel in the dominant Red Bull, but tyre wear remains a key barrier.

Formula 1 returned to ground effect aerodynamics as of 2022, this an era designed to bring the pack closer together, but Red Bull has become the unstoppable force instead.

Despite the budget cap, sliding scale on allotted windtunnel time and cars designed to encourage following and overtaking, Red Bull has strolled to consecutive title doubles, Max Verstappen claiming 17 grand prix wins so far in F1 2023, beating his record-breaking tally of 15 from last season.

McLaren must address tyre wear in Red Bull pursuit

While the chasing pack has made progress on reeling Red Bull in, McLaren arguably the most-improved team of F1 2023 to move to the head of that battle, race trim has remained a realm where the Red Bull RB19 with Verstappen at the wheel cannot be stopped.

And with McLaren’s Lando Norris, runner-up to Verstappen in the Brazil sprint and Grand Prix, noting that he was slipping back from the Dutchman after “10-15 laps” of initial strong pace in his stints, team boss Andrea Stella has concurred that tyre management is the key advantage which Red Bull hold over McLaren.

“I think the difference is mainly in terms of lap time on used tyres,” said Stella, as per Motorsport.com.

“But as soon as the tyres degrade, then it would appear like Max, Red Bull, they can just have less degradation. The tyres were degrading maybe one-tenth every two laps.

“It’s a significant amount of degradation and if you can limit that, after 10 laps in a stint, this is tenths of a second, so I think that’s where they are superior at the moment.

“Where we think the difference is made, we can’t do very much with this car.

“The car has improved with the Singapore upgrade in terms of tyre management, but not enough to be able to compete, especially when degradation is high. And we saw some other cars degrading quite a lot, like Mercedes, Ferrari.”

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Traditionally in this ground-effect era, Mercedes has also been a team which finds performance in race trim compared to one-lap performance, but that certainly was not the case in Brazil.

After a strong start, George Russell and Lewis Hamilton found themselves sinking down as the sprint progressed, the same true on Grand Prix Sunday as Hamilton managed only P8, while Russell retired due to power unit temperature issues.

Hamilton finished over a minute behind Verstappen, having been his closest challenger in Mexico and Austin, leaving Stella surprised.

“That’s a bit of a surprise, because normally, when you have this high level of degradation is also when Mercedes actually seems to do well,” Stella acknowledged.

“We are not sure why that happened. And even from a Ferrari point of view, I would have expected Ferrari to be more competitive.”

McLaren’s current P4 spot in the Constructors’ Championship is now highly likely to be their strongest possible result, but they cannot sleep on Aston Martin a position and 21 points behind, who returned to form at the Brazilian Grand Prix as Fernando Alonso claimed a P3 finish, his eighth podium result of F1 2023.

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