How McLaren has added to its greatest weapon

Last year's French Grand Prix was a nadir for McLaren. It had the second-slowest car at Paul Ricard, while off track it was on the brink of a reshuffle of personnel in an attempt to get back on the right track. New low points followed as the season went from bad to worse, with 'baked in' aerodynamic limitations rendering development attempts largely futile.

This year's French GP was a high point. Lando Norris was only 0.009 seconds slower than Max Verstappen's Red Bull in qualifying, and McLaren likely would have taken a 'one-two' in the midfield battle but for him suffering a hydraulic issue and being shuffled back from seventh thanks to Daniel Ricciardo's last-lap move at the chicane.

It's the third time in eight races that McLaren has prevailed in 'Class B', and while its points tally - 40 - is identical to the same stage last season, there is evidence that the team has eliminated one of its big weaknesses of 2018 and turned it into a strength.

That McLaren had the same number of points this time last year was largely down to being a sharp race team in terms of getting what it could out of a limited car and executing the races well, combined with Fernando Alonso's virtuosity and Stoffel Vandoorne picking up eight of his 12 points for the season in the first eight races. But its performance was not impressive. The most telling figure is the gap to the front.

Over last season, taking each car's fastest individual lap of every race weekend and expressing it as a percentage that can then be averaged out, McLaren was 2.923% off the pace. Even if you calculate the 2018 figure based on the first eight races before McLaren's season slid into oblivion, the deficit was still 2.512%. This year, that figure is 1.796%. That equates to a gain of 0.644s over a hypothetical 90-second lap.

In France, the car's performance was even stronger - 1.244% off the pace. McLaren was able to beat the Renault works team, including Ricciardo with his engine upgrade, both in qualifying and the race. And while Nico Hulkenberg was surprised that McLaren wasn't as strong in the race as it was in qualifying, the strong grid position meant Sainz could control the midfield race.

This season has proved that McLaren's trackside strength remains and, even when it has struggled in qualifying, its race pace has usually been good enough to get into points contention. Part of that is down to getting the tyres to work well in races and, while some rivals suggest it might be more by luck than judgement, any team making the Pirellis work deserves the benefit of the doubt. It all adds up to a formidable race team.

"I'm very impressed with how this race team is performing," said Sainz after the French GP. "The factory is bringing the upgrades and the race team is in charge of delivering the maximum from the car, even more sometimes.

"In Monaco and Spain we did a seriously good job on the strategy and execution. Andreas Seidl, the strategists and my performance engineers, my race engineers - [they] are all doing a great job. They are executing really good races."

What is most encouraging about McLaren is it doesn't appear to have run into the developmental brick wall of last season. Last year's car had fundamental aero problems and suffered from rear-end instability. In testing and at times early in the season, there were signs of a milder instability, but in recent races McLaren appears to have got a handle on the car and new parts have improved things.

Renault had upgrades that Ricciardo suggested meant its set-up wasn't optimised, but factoring in the engine step the team will not be happy to have been beaten by a customer squad

While the points scored early in the season could have been the result of team and drivers getting the best out of the car while others struggled, now we're into the middle stages of the campaign there's real evidence McLaren is up front in the midfield battle on merit. There are also signs of clear improvements, such as the car's pace in longer corners.

"In China, in the long corners we were nowhere," said Sainz. "Here we've made a good step, which probably means the upgrade from Spain has worked well. We still know we need to improve in low-speed corners, so when we go to low-speed tracks we will need to bring a few upgrades to the car to be best of the rest.

"But high-speed and medium-speed, we have decent pace. This track [Paul Ricard], this surface, also suits us well. So we cannot relax and assume we are going to be fourth fastest because today Renault also had very good pace."

As Sainz points out, there is still work to be done to make the car a stronger all-round package. But what's important is that the technical team, now under the leadership of James Key, is making progress both in terms of aerodynamic and mechanical development.

This means the lessons of last year have been learned. Improving in low-speed corners will be another key test, as one of the factors McLaren struggled with was the impact of steering angle on the aero with significant lock on, so pace on slower tracks will also be revealing, even though it was still good enough to be best of the rest in the race in Monaco.

The comparison with Renault at Paul Ricard was also illuminating. Renault had upgrades that Ricciardo suggested meant its set-up wasn't optimised, but factoring in the engine step the team will not be happy to have been beaten by a customer squad.

"I think they've been running more downforce this weekend and, in hindsight, it would've been nice to bolt a bit more on and see how it goes," said Ricciardo. "But we're stuck with the level we've had all weekend. For consistency purposes, we wanted a car we could learn with, but they've got it pretty hooked up in the tight, twisty stuff."

A look at the sector times in qualifying was revealing. To all intents and purposes, Ricciardo was identical on pace in the middle sector, which basically is largely straights, but shipping time in the first and last. That hints at an aero efficiency advantage for McLaren given Ricciardo suggested a higher downforce level.

"Yeah, perhaps," said Ricciardo. "I know from following Carlos in Barcelona, it looked like they're quite low-drag, so the efficiency seems relatively strong."

Last year, McLaren generally had to crank up the rear wing to compensate for the fact it didn't have the expected aero load in corners. The car wasn't excessively draggy as such, but the set-ups it had to run to mitigate its weaknesses hurt it on the straights. That was a problem it carried throughout the season, but there's no sign of it this year.

What is important is McLaren is making gains. Since it was last a championship challenger in 2012, when it had a fast car but was operationally questionable and too unreliable, McLaren has slid a long way off the standards set by F1's elite teams. But good understanding, as well as budget, technology and quality personnel, underpins everything and the steps made this year suggest this is growing within McLaren.

"We are continuously learning and improving," said team boss Seidl. "After bringing the update to Barcelona and seeing that we still had some weak spots, especially in low and medium-speed corners, we kept developing certain areas of the car with small evolutions.

"The guys did a lot of work with the drivers in terms of understanding the weaknesses of the car and trying to put measures in place in terms of how we set up the car simply to get better and better."

In the short-term, McLaren still needs to improve its car to have a shot at being consistently best of the rest. Given being at the front of the midfield was the best realistic achievement for this season, already it can be said that 2019 is a success. For the long term, it needs to make significant strides to match the downforce levels of the big three teams, and the decision to rebuild its windtunnel in Woking rather than using Toyota's facility in Cologne is a statement of intent.

That's the longer-term project, and will take time. For now, the key is to eliminate the limiting factors that were preventing McLaren even being a strong midfielder. Based on what we've seen so far, McLaren is now on the right track - and has added development strength to the strong trackside work it showed last year - even if there is a long way to go given how far one of F1's great teams had fallen.