How McLaren slashed Red Bull's DRS advantage at Zandvoort

With a new rear wing upgrade for the Dutch Grand Prix, McLaren targeted efficiency and downforce to ensure it had good balance between straightline and cornering speed. It also aimed to improve the DRS effect, taking the fight to Red Bull on its home turf. Here's how the upgrade worked

Much of the discourse in the early part of 2023's Formula 1 season revolved around Red Bull's prowess in a straight line, particularly when its DRS was open, as the engineers based in its Milton Keynes HQ had appeared to find a way to dump even more drag when the rear wing element was cracked open.

When the intricacies of the design started to emerge, it appeared to be a simple philosophy: get the floor producing lots of rear-end downforce, run that with a slightly larger upper rear wing, and shrink the beam wing to a shallow single element. With all three parts combining to produce copious levels of downforce in the high-speed corners, the DRS could then be applied on the straights to kill a larger quantity of drag. The floor maintained the traction, but the complete rear wing was then operating at a snip of its total drag output to push the top speeds even higher.

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Author Jake Boxall-Legge

Jake Boxall-Legge Autosport’s Technical Editor. Having studied Automotive Engineering with Motorsport at the University of Hertfordshire, West Country-born Jake's original ambition was to design racing cars. During a year between studies in which he accidentally rekindled a love of writing, he took up a Master's in Motorsport Engineering at Oxford Brookes. Halfway through his master's year, he was offered a place on the Autosport Academy, conducting occasional freelance duties before becoming the press officer for Formula 2 and GP3 in 2018. Autosport offered him a return to the fold later that year to serve as its Technical Editor. His voice appears on a number of videos and podcasts, and can often be found writing about terrible Formula 1 cars in excruciating detail. In his spare time, Jake enjoys baking and blames his failure to make it past the Great British Bake-Off interviews on his tenuous grasp on choux pastry. His dream is to open a brunch cafe - and his willingness to make outrageous puns in inappropriate situations has earned him the contempt of his colleagues.