McLaren shake down their 2022 car ‘MCL36’ at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya

McLaren F1 team’s new 2022 car ‘MCL36’ makes first track debut, as they took to the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya to give their MCL36 a shakedown ahead of pre-season testing.

McLaren launched their new car on February 11 at a live show from their factory. But its first taste of the track happened in Spain, with team drivers Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo behind the wheel.

James Key, McLaren F1 Technical Director, explains what makes the MCL36 so very different to its predecessors.

“Everything! There’s nothing carried over from last year, this is a design on a clean sheet of paper. There are a lot of changes – many of which you can’t see from the outside. Looking at the obvious things you can see, the first thing you notice are the new tyres. We’ve had 13-inch rims for many years, with high profile tyres, we’re now on 18-inch rims with low profile tyres.

It’s a big change for Pirelli and they’ve done a really thorough job of developing these new tyres over the last couple of years. For us, any tyre change can generate a lot of design influence. Of course, you’ve got to work with a different grip level but also with the way the car balances, how the new tyres affect the handling and so on. We’ve tracked this very closely, as its one of the biggest changes to the regulations we’ve seen in recent years.

The other big step is the aerodynamics, which are fundamentally different. The teams, the FIA and F1 have been through a really good process, attempting to define cars that are still very much F1 cars, still have the level of performance you expect from F1 cars but have the ability to follow each other far more closely, and attempt overtaking without having to wait for a DRS zone.

F1 cars go quick because they generate huge amounts of downforce. The previous regulations have seen cars generate that downforce in ways that are easily disrupted by the wake of the car ahead. The car struggles to follow closely because it loses (aerodynamic) load and balance, and overheats its tyres, making it very difficult to drive.

We’ve been through a thorough process of deriving new aerodynamics. We have a [shaped] floor designed to generate downforce through ground effect, and a lot of areas of bodywork have been greatly simplified, where complex designs that were susceptible to disturbances in [air] flow – such as the myriad devices we previously had on the front of the sidepods and front of the floor – have all gone.

We have a much-simplified front wing. It’s a real monster, absolutely enormous and very powerful – but much-simplified compared to the one it replaced. We’ve got things like spinning wheel covers, which will prevent out-washing airflow, which was a big contributor to a disturbed wake and therefore very bad for a following car, and at the rear we have a massive diffuser and a very different shape to the rear wing.”

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Drivers reaction Post-Shakedown