In the last edition of Tech Weekly we discussed how McLaren dramatically overturned Red Bull’s dominance in 2024 from the Miami Grand Prix onwards and how it was done. The advantage of the Red Bull’s more sophisticated aerodynamics – the root of the team’s record-breaking form in the previous two seasons – was more than overcome by McLaren’s mastery of how to apply aero-elasticity to its front wing.
In unblocking the biggest aerodynamic bottleneck of this generation of car, McLaren leapfrogged past the more sophisticated Red Bull in one spectacular move. Red Bull were unable to respond because of the cost cap and other resource implications.
But until then, Red Bull had remained one step ahead of the opposition for more than two seasons. Here, we review how they did it, how that era was brought to an end so suddenly and how that poses an intriguing question for 2025.
TECH WEEKLY: The key 2024 performance differentiator that saw McLaren usurp Red Bull as the F1 team to beat
