The brake failure at McLaren, a symbol of the misunderstanding of the F1 2022?

If the British team impressed during the Barcelona tests, the ones in Bahrain were far less impressive, as the MCL36s suffered from brake overheating. Moreover, McLaren’s results in the first race of the season are far from satisfactory. Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris had to settle for fourteenth and fifteenth place respectively, thanks to the retirement of the two Red Bulls at the front.

For James Key, the technical director of the team, some new features had an unexpected impact on the cars. “I think, in a way, it shows just how new these cars are and how much there is still to learn for them to function correctly,” he said. “I think the brake duct was a particularly strange anomaly, in the sense that it met all our cooling criteria,” revealed James Key.

« You think to yourself, “What the hell is going on here?”, so you start looking and realize that under certain conditions, which were shown on this circuit [Bahrain], it sort of shut down internally, (he) continued. In the meantime, McLaren obtained parts straight from the factory to make some adjustments. But if that didn’t change much at the time, McLaren had to find a temporary solution for the Bahrain Grand Prix.

More work for McLaren before Jeddah.

“The guys did a fantastic job finding out what was wrong very quickly,” explained James Key. “Bringing solutions from an aerodynamic perspective, in terms of the duct flow, and integrating that into the design and then pushing to get the parts here. It had been a while since we had to do that, so it was an excellent response from the team,” he admitted.

« But it was also a good lesson. I think it shows how all the methods we used in the past may not have necessarily brought something new here, » concluded Key. With the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix coming up this weekend, McLaren still needs to assess the most relevant changes to make.