Carlos Sainz talks about the progress made by McLaren with MCL35 and also discusses the tyre performance ahead of the 2020 F1 season start.
McLaren MCL35 has been one of the least talked-about cars on the 2020 F1 grid, as it had a trouble-free testing in Barcelona. Additionally, the team were productive, but showed no show-stopping lap times, which resulted in a quiet two weeks for the British team.
While the improvements to the car may seem less dramatic when compared to Racing Point’s lightning-quick RP20, for example, Sainz has said that he feels and sees a car which has far more downforce than its predecessor.
Although he did acknowledge that such changes are difficult to measure until the 2020 F1 season opener in Australia. “We’ve added some good downforce to the car,” said Sainz to media including FormulaRapida.net, when asked about MCL35.
“We’re happier than we were here twelve months ago. [The] car feels much better, especially in sectors one and two [at Barcelona circuit]. We tend to look very good, very well balanced. Last sector looked a bit better, but still [it’s] our weakness.
“It is something we need to keep working on as a team. And then the rest we dictate how happy or how sad we are come Melbourne qualifying, and see how much we were losing or gaining compared to the others.”
“I think there were differences in how teams were running in fuel loads or in power unit modes in testing, and we need to take that into account. We cannot take too many conclusions, we need to analyse ourselves.
“We’re doing a better job dissecting our performance levels in different sectors, and trying things to make it better.” Shifting gears from downforce, to mechanical grip which is provided primarily by tyres, the Spaniard also touched upon how the 2019-spec tyres are gelling with the 2020 breed of cars, as Pirelli decided to stick with last year’s compound.
“The softer compounds in Barcelona, the C5, that is an incredible tyre that works everywhere, over one lap and it’s a great tyre,” said Sainz. “I think for example the C4 feels very chewy at this track in the last sector, and I don’t like it.
“But apart from that the C2, the C3, they all look very promising, C1 is still way too hard – for these cars, even. But the main compounds are still working perfectly, here so I think already in that sense, they’ve taken a wise decision to carry over [the tyres].
“For us, last year and two years ago, the C4 is slower around this track, so I’m not surprised. The C5 is a good step. It’s at least half a second, so nothing to worry about. The C4 just doesn’t work for us here.”
Here’s the stats and figures from Test 2 and overall
Here’s the tyre choices for Australian GP
The story was edited by Darshan Chokhani