Before the Italian Grand Prix weekend began Carlos Sainz Jnr said McLaren have become the team to beat in Formula 1 because they are the only team whose updates have worked as intended at every race.
The first two days of running at Monza appeared to bear that out. For the fifth time this year, and the fourth race in a row, the MCL38 set the fastest individual lap time of any car.The competitive picture has gone through three phases in 2024. First, Red Bull were undoubtedly the team to beat, reeling off the quickest time at all of the first seven races bar Bahrain, where Ferrari were 0.02% quicker (but Max Verstappen still snuck pole position).
Then from the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in May to the Hungarian Grand Prix last month, the identity of the fastest team changed every weekend. During that seven-round run Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren swapped places at the top of the pile.
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But now it seems McLaren have the edge. Their margin of superiority hasn’t yet hit the kind of peak Red Bull enjoyed earlier in the year – an average of 0.23% compared to 0.39% in Red Bull’s best four-race run – the upper hand is undoubtedly theirs.
“We’ve definitely been taking some smaller steps forward,” he said after taking pole position today. “But some of the upgrades we had have been track-specific. The rear wing that we had which was the main part of the upgrade last weekend, we don’t have it again here. So it’s not like what worked perfectly well there, works here.
“So we had that, but we also had the rear wing again this weekend. So specific things, but it’s not like it revolutionised the car or made the car feel like it’s a lot better. It’s just a bit more efficient.
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“It’s smaller things, but those smaller things really make big differences in the end. If you have one or two smaller snaps [of oversteer] over a single lap, you can gain half a tenth, one tenth quite quickly because the tyres are in a better condition, the temperature’s less, and things like that. They’ve definitely helped.”
Those two teams close to within 0.2s of McLaren. So while Red Bull were little further behind in real terms at Monza than they were at Zandvoort – 0.3s – suddenly Verstappen has six cars instead of him instead of one. The vital question for the final third of the season will be whether Red Bull can correct this blip.
Although the field posted higher straight-line speeds this year compared to last, the current generation of F1 cars are still not at the same performance level as their predecessors of 2019-21. That’s even with the benefit of a fresh, smoother track surface and a DRS zone on the main straight which has been extended by 103 metres.
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Sector times
| P. | # | Driver | S1 | S2 | S3 | Ultimate lap (deficit) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 | Lando Norris | 26.395 (8) | 26.579 (1) | 26.253 (1) | 1’19.227 (+0.100) |
| 2 | 81 | Oscar Piastri | 26.399 (10) | 26.643 (2) | 26.386 (5) | 1’19.428 (+0.008) |
| 3 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | 26.381 (6) | 26.672 (4) | 26.379 (4) | 1’19.432 (+0.081) |
| 4 | 63 | George Russell | 26.296 (2) | 26.836 (7) | 26.3 (2) | 1’19.432 (+0.008) |
| 5 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | 26.373 (5) | 26.732 (5) | 26.356 (3) | 1’19.461 |
| 6 | 55 | Carlos Sainz Jnr | 26.223 (1) | 26.823 (6) | 26.421 (6) | 1’19.467 |
| 7 | 1 | Max Verstappen | 26.389 (7) | 26.656 (3) | 26.579 (8) | 1’19.624 (+0.038) |
| 8 | 11 | Sergio Perez | 26.488 (15) | 27.034 (8) | 26.532 (7) | 1’20.054 (+0.008) |
| 9 | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | 26.341 (3) | 27.074 (10) | 26.763 (9) | 1’20.178 (+0.161) |
| 10 | 23 | Alexander Albon | 26.395 (8) | 27.071 (9) | 26.769 (10) | 1’20.235 (+0.064) |
| 11 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | 26.424 (11) | 27.131 (12) | 26.827 (11) | 1’20.382 (+0.039) |
| 12 | 20 | Kevin Magnussen | 26.466 (13) | 27.107 (11) | 26.869 (12) | 1’20.442 (+0.256) |
| 13 | 3 | Daniel Ricciardo | 26.363 (4) | 27.141 (13) | 26.954 (16) | 1’20.458 (+0.021) |
| 14 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | 26.436 (12) | 27.264 (16) | 26.912 (14) | 1’20.612 (+0.152) |
| 15 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | 26.473 (14) | 27.263 (15) | 26.911 (13) | 1’20.647 (+0.091) |
| 16 | 22 | Yuki Tsunoda | 26.54 (17) | 27.386 (17) | 26.967 (17) | 1’20.893 (+0.052) |
| 17 | 18 | Lance Stroll | 26.575 (19) | 27.18 (14) | 27.185 (20) | 1’20.940 (+0.073) |
| 18 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | 26.572 (18) | 27.446 (19) | 26.949 (15) | 1’20.967 (+0.134) |
| 19 | 24 | Zhou Guanyu | 26.5 (16) | 27.485 (20) | 27.052 (19) | 1’21.037 (+0.408) |
| 20 | 43 | Franco Colapinto | 26.613 (20) | 27.42 (18) | 27.028 (18) | 1’21.061 |
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2024 Italian Grand Prix
- Verstappen faces post-race investigation along with five other drivers and McLaren
- Red Bull lose constructors’ championship lead for first time in two years
- “Never had so much pain in a car”: How Colapinto impressed Williams on his debut
- F1’s most competitive season for 47 years? Four teams now have three wins each
- “Can I have my PU performance back?” – Verstappen’s “tough” Monza race on his radio
Jere (@jerejj)
1st September 2024, 5:29
2017 was wet, but 2018 dry, so that season also belongs to the predecessor group here, but slower than them is no biggie, not that I expected re-laid tarmac or earlier activation zone starting point to make a difference on this front.
frood19 (@frood19)
1st September 2024, 6:55
The notion that small improvements in stability give substantial improvements in lap time is pretty interesting. It might explain why we see a number of teams finding their simulations or wind tunnel results are not always well correlated to the track/race conditions. My interpretation is that this could be specific to the pirelli era – in the past, teams could bolt on new parts that delivered peak performance improvements but which weren’t necessarily stable in all conditions (wind, track temperature variations etc) and this delivered a net lap time improvement because the tyres could handle a few snaps of oversteer, for example. In the pirelli era, the new parts need to also deliver stability because peak performance is cancelled out by even minor moments of instability because the tyres get cooked so easily.
Basically, correlation to the track mattered less when we had more durable tyres. This is also coupled with reduced wind tunnel time and far less on track testing, so if you’re correlation is good you have an automatic huge advantage. But I suspect they are all winging it a bit on that front – there are so many variables to model that if you get it right, there’s probably a fair bit of luck involved.