Rey

MEX(L)ICO GP: A game of ride-heights? I’m deviating from usual proceedings and posting about McL before Ferrari (covered in 2nd part of thread), because McL appears to be showing a big difference in the setup for its 2 drivers. Such a noticeable difference seems very odd given both its drivers are in contention for WDC. During FP1 & FP2 sessions at Mexico while McL always showed strong race pace, it didn’t really have a huge advantage in Quali. Then in FP3, #Lando went in for a setup change and Bernie commented that they’re changing his ride-height (see video below). After that change (which I presume was to lower the ride-height), Lando absolutely blitzed the field in quali sim. Norris likely carried that setup into Quali & Race as well. Based on telemetry, I get the sense that the ride-height they chose for Lando was overly-aggressive to gain Quali performance. But it needed a lot of management in the race to avoid plank wear. The chart below shows Lando's speed going into Turn 1 on various laps. He was doing Lico until Lap 50. Then on lap 53, he is instructed by his race engineer to press the red button longer into T1 (snapshot shown below). This is likely some kind of speed limiter (by cutting ERS?) because all laps after that have a low top-speed (<318 kmph) - even lower than the speeds seen earlier in the race on more fuel. At higher top speeds, greater dwf pushes the car further towards the ground, risking plank wear. If you are marginal on ride-height/plank wear, then it would make sense to constrain your top-speed on the straight towards Turn 1, especially when you are running lighter (which typically makes you faster). But it looks like only Lando was managing this extensively and not #OscarPiastri Towards the last few laps (shown in chart), there is huge difference in top-speeds on straight towards T1 between LN and OP as LN has a sort of speed limiter on since lap 53. LN is also doing more LiCo into T4 and T12 compared to OP even though OP was the one who was almost always in dirty air. Given LN had to do so much more management, my theory is that he was running a much lower ride-height than OP. This would then also explain the difference in their quali performance. OP has generally been strong in high speed corners this yr. However, he has to lift in high speed T8-T9-T10 compared to LN for Quali and lost time there. LN was also peerless in the change of direction corners. Typically, when you are running low ride-height, the great dwf being created helps immensely in high-speed and in change in direction performance. So looking at the quali lap differences and the higher degree of management that LN had to do during the race, I think LN was running a much lower ride-height than OP. Question is who decided on this setup strategy - Did @OscarPiastri decide to not use the same ride-height as LN? But why? This year has been a quali championship of sorts and Mexico is difficult to overtake in. So why hand over such a large grid position advantage to his main championship rival? #F1 #McLaren #Norris #Piastri