The tech concept changes behind McLaren's revival

It's taken a complete change to the management structure, an entirely new engine supplier and a clean-sheet approach to its driver line-up, but McLaren has finally been able to arrest its alarming slide down the Formula 1 pecking order.

After a quartet of particularly lean years following its break-up with Mercedes, McLaren is arguably back to where it was at the turn of the turbo-hybrid era.

And there's more to come from the team, as it looks to break out of the cycle of transitional year after transitional year. At last McLaren has built the squad it has craved, and the eradication of toxic politicking has created an environment where the technical team can get to work on what it does best - building fast racing cars.

The year began with the MCL34 firmly entrenched in the midfield fight, but now McLaren occupies fourth in the constructors' championship and its strength is continuing to build race-by-race.

It's quite the change compared with last year. But an overhaul doesn't just happen overnight; although one could conceivably stumble into designing an excellent car, that possibility is infinitesimally small. Instead, McLaren had to undergo a protracted period of detailed self-examination before it could begin its recovery.

Most saliently, the team accepted that it no longer had anywhere to hide. Years of placing the blame for underperformance at Honda's door masked a generation of cars that had their own deficiencies; once the team traded engine contracts with Toro Rosso to clinch a Renault supply, the shortcomings were revealed.

Last year's MCL33 started the season adequately, but fundamental problems with the car limited its opportunities for development.

Already, 2019 has been a complete turnaround. McLaren needed a concept that would yield plenty of development potential, while retaining the lessons learned after a full autopsy of the 2018 car.

Having looked at how frontrunners Mercedes and Ferrari had gone their own separate ways with F1 car development, McLaren's design team instead decided to target a similar ethos to Red Bull - which had enjoyed plenty of success with Renault power.

"Red Bull is closer, but they are ahead," explained performance director Andrea Stella. "But in terms of course of inspiration and benchmark, Red Bull was a better point of reference.

"The good thing about this year's car is that it can obviously be developed with the good work in our departments, but it can also be developed through the other cars.

"Last year, even if we saw good stuff on [another] car, it was just not applicable on our car because we were in our own space from an aerodynamic point of view.

After the Australian Grand Prix, McLaren's team was strengthened by the arrival of James Key, cherry-picked from Toro Rosso to head up the technical staff

"It is important to say that the good work that happened in the aero department and then in the overall team, it didn't start in December or January or whenever you shake down this car, it started from very far away.

"To rectify this situation, it takes a long-term investment and we are speaking about rectifying, but it is not like we now have the best car on the grid; we did a decent job to be part of the midfield pack."

While McLaren perhaps didn't enjoy the smoothest of pre-season testing spells, the engineers had enough food for thought in the run up towards Melbourne.

There, the Albert Park circuit immediately drew one of the MCL34's weaknesses out; a comparative lack of performance in low-speed corners against its midfield rivals.

Boosting the low-speed performance of the car immediately became a target for the team to work towards, representing a change in direction compared with 2018. A new bargeboard package for Bahrain aimed to improve that, but there was still work to be done.

McLaren's supertime data - the percentage of the fastest time by each car across a GP weekend - reflect those characteristics, underlining the change in performance between Australia/China (both circuits with heavy braking zones and low-speed corners) and Bahrain/Baku (where medium-speed corners are more prevalent).

Australia: 102.259%
Bahrain: 101.078%
China: 102.159%
Azerbaijan: 101.384%

After the Australian Grand Prix, McLaren's team was strengthened by the arrival of James Key, poached from Toro Rosso to head up the technical staff.

Once he had taken position at the helm, Key was immediately called upon to plot McLaren's course through the labyrinth of upgrade possibilities, fed with notes from the engineers already on board.

Naturally, McLaren's update package for Spain aimed to rectify the early-season problems. The focus was on topping up the overall downforce, hence the major aero package which came on stream in Barcelona to kick-start the team's ascent up the field.

A new front wing, following the trend of letting the outboard portion wash downwards, was devised to link up with an overhauled bargeboard package while a new engine cover also made an appearance.

"I wasn't there at the beginning of the season or when it tested," says Key, "but it is fair to say that it started off in a place at the beginning of winter testing.

"Then there was some very good work done for Barcelona which recovered some of the issues that I think were very clear from my understanding - like in Australia for example with certain characteristics.

"Those updates did address particularly some of the aspects in low speed - but only aspects. But they did enhance the high [speed]. We have been monitoring closely race-by-race."

That said, the impact of those Barcelona upgrades wasn't immediate. Indeed, McLaren struggled with the sensitivity and stability of the rear end during the final sector, and driver Carlos Sainz expressed his surprise that he had managed to snatch a few points despite the team's struggles.

"It has been about careful monitoring. We bring updates and we have been experimenting a little bit, so probably due to some of the issues last year, a very, very rigorous approach this year has helped" James Key

"I was struggling in the final sector," he explained post-race, "with the rear end and the wind. No feeling with the car at all, just complaining the whole race with the rear.

"We learned we need to improve in the low speed in the final sector. We're not very strong there. Not much more.

"The balance was not right in the car, so we need to check something massively, so we need to find out why the pace was not there.

"Here we didn't find the right balance in the car for the last sector and basically that cost us in qualifying and race pace, but we will go back and analyse why."

And analyse they did. McLaren had the chance to focus on discovering why the MCL34 fell down in the final sector at Spain during the following week's test, a crucial task given that the next round was in Monaco. The final sector at Barcelona is a physical one, requiring deft changes of direction in a confined area - similar to Monte-Carlo's claustrophobic layout.

Putting the groundwork in during the test gave McLaren enough data to home in on the issue, and the team's Monaco performance benefited hugely from that running. Sainz finished sixth.

Although the next round in Canada was disappointing, since Lando Norris suffered a dramatic suspension failure and Sainz's tyres were shot to pieces by the end, Sainz still praised the team for its "experimental" approach to free practice sessions there.

With more exposure to low-speed corners, McLaren has been able to find the workings of an antidote to the rear-end imbalance, which has had a positive knock-on effect for the rest of the car. Key now feels that as a result, any low-speed grievances are now "independent of high speed performance".

"Before those [Barcelona] updates came in, we couldn't carry as much front wing as we would have liked to have done," he explains.

"In the early stages, with a bit of rear instability, you had to be careful. The rear improved a bit and that allowed us to balance the car in the high speed corners better.

"It has been about careful monitoring. We bring updates and we have been experimenting a little bit, so probably due to some of the issues last year, a very, very rigorous approach this year has helped."

From Spain and beyond, the supertimes relative to the frontrunners have stabilised. There's still a degree of ebb and flow, as circuit characteristics suit some better than others, but McLaren's upgrades and understanding have kept the team within 102% of the fastest runner.

For comparison, the works Renault team dropped between the 102-103% bracket in both Austria and Hungary, underlining its relative inconsistency compared to the McLaren stats below.

Spain: 102.562%
Monaco: 101.783%
Canada: 101.896%
France: 101.244%
Austria: 101.740%
Britain: 101.159%
Germany: 101.205%
Hungary: 101.647%

Behind every successful car is a well-drilled race team, and Seidl is also keen to point out the efforts of the track-based personnel to get the best out of the MCL34 were also a huge contributor to the team's fortunes.

"We are in P4, which is great at the moment but it was not just down to car performance" Seidl suggests. "The car performance on average was between fourth and sixth, seventh - but we have other categories also where we are quite competitive, like race starts, pitstops, good strategy calls, good drivers, which made us score good points and the points we have so far whereas other teams are struggling a bit more in the midfield.

Beholden to its history, the leap back in time and rekindling of old relationships with Ron Dennis and Honda only worsened the slump, rather than rolling back the years of unparalleled dominance

"We were always somehow between P4 and P6, and other teams had more ups and downs."

Having established itself as 'best of the rest' ahead of the summer break, McLaren has a way to go - not only to stay there, but also to reflect upon the gap it currently faces to F1's 'Big Three'.

But under the new governance of Seidl, the team is careful not to run before it can walk; the rebuilding project is still ongoing, and there's plenty more to come.

Recently, Seidl announced the team would install a new windtunnel at the McLaren Technology Centre, bringing the focus on development back in-house rather than relying on Toyota's Cologne windtunnel.

"From my side, we are in P4 now and we want to fight for it. Absolutely clear. That is the nature of the game we are in," he says.

"But at the same time for me, to be honest, it is a lot more important that we made this step from last year to this year; that we make our conclusion, we put together our vision of how we want to approach the future and it is important for me that we make the next step with next year's car."

Key adds: "You have got to be a top team to do what we're doing, compared with a few years back, because the level of detail and understanding that you need to develop just to try to tackle some of the issues is massive - which is probably why we got a bit of a gap when you look at the size of the teams.

"The size of those teams compared with most means they have the best opportunity in terms of understanding and exploiting most of the opportunities that are there.

"I think it's a mix of getting those sensitivities and conditions understood, then working through them step-by-step to be where you want to be in terms of overall downforce period. There was a mix of those two to make that step."

Having failed to win a grand prix since 2012, McLaren has endured the worst dip of its tenure in F1. Beholden to its history, the leap back in time and rekindling of old relationships with Ron Dennis and Honda only worsened the slump, rather than rolling back the years of unparalleled dominance.

Now it's a forward-thinking team with a long-term project. McLaren knows that it cannot simply relive the glory years, but it can create new ones. It might be a long journey, but the team is finally on the right road.