Have McLaren got F1 title advantage in 25 that others will be stumped to copy?

[John S]

Craig Scarborough, an F1 tech reporter, reckons Macca have built themselves an advantage with innovative front suspension & steering fix on their 25 car. See his explanation below.

Wonder if any of the other teams will want to divert big budget from tight cost cap to replicate McLaren's new front end offering?
Guess it may take Macca getting a big head start in 25 titles race to force the issue.

Whoever said innovation is dead in F1.  Here's Craig words explaining on a podcast with Peter Windsor just what Macca have put on their 25 car:-

“If you don’t remember, last year McLaren actually changed the position of the steering rack."

“Last year, they moved the track rod arms from in front of the lower suspension to behind it and this actually meant that they could mount them slightly lower and cascade them with the wishbone and actually create lots of flow to go down into the floor.

“This is actually really quite clever and relatively easy to package within the current Formula 1 cars because the nose is so long on these cars."

“Funnily enough, Mercedes have copied that solution this year but McLaren have gone a step further."

“They’ve actually moved the steering rack ever so slightly forward, so rather than being behind the lower wishbone now, it’s now in between the two legs of the lower wishbone.”

He continued: “Rather than having the track rod go outwards like you would almost see on every race car ever, the track rods go diagonally forwards and actually go across the centre line of the front wheels and then steer the wheels from the front half of the upright."

“This isn’t anything to do with steering geometry or the term anti-dive that everyone seems to apply to the suspension setup, it’s actually all to do with aerodynamics and moving these wishbone arms or these track rod arms to be leaning forward in plan view, you end up with a very long piece of surface area on which to create downwash to make the floor work better.

“Now, this is anything that anyone can now copy at this stage of the season, it just isn’t economically or practically viable to reconstruct your chassis."

“So, they’ve got a small aerodynamic advantage by making this change and it’ll be interesting to see if that is something that maybe does follow into the future regulations.”

[Jericoke]

There's always plenty of ideas like this in F1

The miracle is that 10 teams start with a blank page, and still come up with multi million dollar cars that can finish within 30 seconds of each other over a 200 km race.