Norris To Race With New McLaren F1 Nose Concept
Just like teammate Carlos Sainz, Norris ran with a typical set-up on Friday – a way that he said was also partially to avoid the danger of damaging the new one – before the team made a final call last night to trial the new nose on Norris' car during the rest of the weekend.
Despite a scarcity of spare parts creating problems if any damage is incurred McLaren ultimately decided to run the new spec, and thus gain information from a full race distance on Sunday.
Norris was 20th and slowest in Saturday’s FP3 session after not completing his qualifying simulation run, while Sainz was an encouraging third with the standard nose.
“We did some changes to the car overnight, so hopefully we'll make subsequent step in terms of performance,” team boss Andreas Seidl told Sky F1.
“We decided to continue with the new nose concept within the morning with Lando, with a target to carry this forward to qualifying and thus the race tomorrow. On Carlos’ side we decided to remain with the old concept.
“You got to know that this new nose may be a component of a wider package which we’ll plan to introduce gradually step-by-step, therefore the complete gain of this nose isn't there yet. But still it’s important for us to collect the utmost amount data as possible as early as possible, and this is often often why we decided to separate both cars.
“At the same time it’s a huge logistical challenge at the moment , the quantity of parts is kind of low on the new nose. That’s why we proceed like that.”
The new solution, which bears a resemblance to the nose design employed by Mercedes for a couple of time now and subsequently adopted by the likes of Racing Point and Renault, features narrower pillars beneath the nose structure that connect it to the front wing, whilst the cape now forms its own surface, rather than being constructed as a neighborhood of the wing pillars. However, in Sochi this wasn’t the only test item on the menu for McLaren, because the team continues to bring race-by-race updates that need to unlock performance from each other .
Having installed new bargeboards and sidepod deflectors in previous races (blue and red arrows respectively), the team has moved its attention further forward now around, that concentrate on the front wing.
McLaren leads an in depth four-way fight for third place within the constructors' championship. After eight races, McLaren has 98 points, with Racing Point, Renault and Ferrari within 27 of them, and 396 points available within the remaining rounds.
The new design concentrates its efforts in two main areas - the Y250 region, which sees the lowermost flap shortened and thus the refore the tip blunted (red arrow) and therefore the two flaps above now have an extra metal support placed between them to prevent the gap between them closing (blue arrow).
In the section of the wing outboard of the adjuster, the flaps are relaxed slightly to vary the airflow across and around the face of the tyre so on improve the trajectory of the wake turbulence because it travels down the length of the car.
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