The new McLaren upgrades that have Red Bull worried

Outstanding developments at core of remarkable turnaround that has McLaren placed as favourites for the constructors’ title

In winning the Dutch Grand Prix by 22.8 seconds, Lando Norris and McLaren recorded the most dominant victory of the season. When the year began in Bahrain, Max Verstappen won by a similar margin over his Red Bull team-mate, with the lead McLaren of Norris an enormous 48 seconds down the road.
Back then, it would have been nearly unfathomable to believe that we could witness the turnaround of performance at the front that has occurred in the past few months. It is testament to McLaren’s outstanding development that they are where they are now. They are favourites for the constructors’ title on form and, even though Verstappen should win the drivers’ title, a Norris championship no longer seems impossible.
Although the return from their upgrades at Zandvoort was not as dramatic as those which delivered them a first victory of 2024 in Miami, the newest McLaren updates will have Red Bull – whose development appears to have stalled – worried. 
There were six updates (some of them Zandvoort-specific) for the MCL38 at the weekend including the front suspension shrouds and front-brake ducts. By far the most important and perhaps effective, though, was the new rear wing.
In the past, McLaren have struggled, relatively, on the higher downforce circuits, of which Zandvoort is one. They have also had problems with how the DRS interacts with the rest of the car, which is where Red Bull have been strong, particularly last year.
The aim with McLaren’s new rear wing would have been to address these two issues; in other words, find more downforce when the DRS slot is closed and lose more drag when the DRS flap is open. 
If you do manage this, you have achieved a double whammy that will give you more downforce in the corners and a higher top speed on the straights when DRS is activated — on every qualifying lap and also when trying to overtake in the race. You do not need a PhD in aerodynamics to understand how much of a help this is.
If you look at the outside of the new rear wing, it comes up from the maximum depth in the middle a little more progressively than the previous version. With the aerodynamic surfaces on the rear and front wings, if you change direction of the surface of the wing too dramatically you get “transfer of flow”. This is where the harder working area of the wing will pull airflow from the area of the wing that is doing less of the work. That means airflow, instead of going from front to back in the desired way, goes across the wing. That is never good.
What McLaren have done with this update is to optimise the load distribution across the wing, but it is by no means an enormous change. It is more of a tweak to get more downforce and it appears to have delivered, yet again. As ever with these ground-effect cars, you are trying to optimise every bit of the car, because everything you change alters the flow downstream. It is important to take a lot of little steps rather than one revolutionary step and every step McLaren take appears to be in the right direction.
The main thing when it comes to a team’s development direction is about having confidence in what you are trying to achieve. If you have confidence, you will push the limits a bit further, which is what McLaren are doing. Contrast that with Red Bull who, since chief technical guru Adrian Newey handed in his resignation, are scratching their heads in trying to develop the RB20 into a race-winning car again. Do not forget this is an evolution of a car that won all but one race in 2023 and four of the first five rounds this year, many of them easily. It has now all gone a little bit wrong.
There will always be diminishing returns within the current regulation set as time goes on but McLaren seem to be getting more from it than their rivals. They have a car that is faster than Red Bull at the moment but, more importantly, it is able to translate that into being consistent over a whole race distance, as has been proved in the past few months.
Of course, the winning margin might have been larger had Norris kept the lead at the start. But that, in fact, gave him the advantage of dropping back a little from Verstappen and allowing the Dutchman to dictate the pace. That then allowed Norris to look after his tyres (which is another area that McLaren have an advantage over Red Bull), bide his time and make the pass before the first stops, before extending his lead dramatically and controlling the race. 
It has been a long time since McLaren were able to do that and Red Bull were left shocked watching another team’s car disappearing into the distance.
One area McLaren do need to work on is their race starts. Both Norris and Oscar Piastri lost positions off the line at Zandvoort and, with two championships on the line, it could become costly as the season goes on.
There is something wrong either with what the drivers are doing, how the team are setting the car up for the starts or the information the drivers are getting. This should probably be the next focus of McLaren’s development, even though it was not too costly on Sunday. You would much rather be 1.5 seconds ahead after two laps than 1.5 seconds behind, as Norris was, knowing you have to pass to win, on track or at the pits.