“A lot of components had to change” – McLaren 2021 car design would have been different if it had not changed to Mercedes’ power unit

McLaren revealed that it had to spend all its tokens on the Mercedes’ engine instalment and therefore it could not change its design.

McLaren’s MCL35M would have had some different designs if it had not spent its tokens on adjusting its chassis to fit the Mercedes’ engine.

The FIA in its COVID emergency planning had made it compulsory for the teams to use the same chassis designs for both the 2020 and 2021 seasons. This was done keeping in mind that the technical regulations were almost the same between 2020 and 2021.

However, the teams were given some development tokens to make minor changes and updates to their car. But, McLaren had to use all the tokens to shift from Renault to Mercedes in 2021.

This left them incapable of making any changes to the weak components of their car that they had identified in 2020. The technical director of the Woking-based team, James Key, said, “we didn’t dwell on it too long.”

“We would have loved to have had the token spend. We always said [it was] a little bit unfortunate that we had to spend it on engine installation. A lot of components had to change, but the intent of homologation was to keep components the same, so you can kind of understand it.”

“We brought the bits forward to try and overcome some of those issues, so we did extra work in 2020 to compensate for the fact we didn’t have tokens to spend in ’21,” he further added.

Also Read: Honda F1 boss Masashi Yamamoto reveals which Red Bull personality convinced them to stay after McLaren break-up

McLaren would have made changes to its front suspension

If the team had their normal freedom it surely would have made the changes. Although Key says that not being able to do so did not put the team at a massive disadvantage.

Key explained, “I think, with the busyness of a new engine installation probably dominated our thoughts. But, yeah, I think there would have been things we would have done differently.”

He believes that the engine installation would have been a bit different. They had to install a Mercedes engine in a car designed for a Renault engine. That’s what the FIA wanted to see. Key explained that in a normal scenario that would not have happened.

“You’d put it in a car designed for a Mercedes, so there were a few compromises there. As far as token spend is concerned, there are probably a few areas we would have attacked again around the front suspension.”

“Maybe a little bit on the rear mechanically, but I don’t think it put us at a massive disadvantage. The concepts we wanted on the ’21 car, we put on in 2020 in the end,” he concluded.

Also Read: Mick Schumacher revealed what he learned in his rookie year at Haas