Why McLaren is 'scraping the bottom of the jar' in Red Bull hunt

McLaren has described how searching for F1 upgrades is increasingly like "scraping around the bottom of the jar" in its pursuit of Red Bull. 

The team is targeting a push for the constructors' championship this term, currently sitting 42 points behind leaders Red Bull with the MCL38 regarded as the fastest car on the grid. 

That is an accolade that had gone to Red Bull throughout the ground-effects era, but the RB20 appears to have hit a development plateau in the third year of the regulations after the stunning success of 2023's RB19 that won 21 from 22 races.

McLaren was starting from a lower ceiling than Red Bull with its new car for the season, with engineering and design technical director Rob Marshall believing all teams are facing diminishing returns, as the MCL38 receiving another substantial upgrade package at Zandvoort for the Dutch Grand Prix.

"I think the regulations have been with us for a while, and because of the nature of the regulations, it is much more limited with what the aerodynamicists can play with," former Red Bull chief designer Marshall told media including RacingNews365.

"I guess it is like you are scraping around the bottom of the jar for the last bit of lap-time, and you've got a knife and you are in the corners, and not much comes out. 

"We don't consciously choose to target one event, and it just turns out that we managed to deliver a lot of stuff in Miami, which was our last real upgrade.

"That was a bit of a surprise to us how successful it was, and hopefully this upgrade is a decent chunk again, but it is less clear.

"There are some things we are not so certain about, something is slightly more risky than others, but unfortunately with the weather as it is, it is going to be difficult to assess it this weekend I suspect."

McLaren vs Red Bull

The rate at which McLaren has caught Red Bull in 2024 has surprised many, with there being fears early on that Max Verstappen would run away with the championship for a third straight season, especially after seven wins from the first 10 races.

However, Marshall does not believe it is a case of McLaren being slow out of the starting blocks.

"I don't think we under-delivered at the beginning of the year," he said.

"I guess engineers are naturally a bit pessimistic and don't want to big their plans up too much, so when I say [the Miami upgrade] over-delivered, it delivered at the top end of what we thought we could get out of it. 

"If you're asking aerodynamicists what something is worth, and they go: 'Oh, that's two-tenths, that is two-tenths' and then you say: 'That's five lots of two-tenths, so is that a second?', they'll go: 'Oh not, can't possibly be a second.'

"We're talking that 20 milliseconds, 20 milliseconds, 20 milliseconds and so on might get a tenth, might be a tenth-and-a-half or you might get nothing."