McLaren come into the Chinese Grand Prix weekend off the back of a highly encouraging Bahrain, where Lando Norris scored sixth (best of the rest after the big three teams) and where Carlos Sainz was fighting with Max Verstappen’s Red Bull before a collision between them resulted in a puncture for the Spaniard. However, although Sainz was excited by the car’s performance in the desert, he was counselling caution about whether such form could be taken for granted. “Let’s see how we get on at a more front-limited track, like China,” he said. “Our car is slightly front-limited at the moment and Bahrain is a rear-limited track, so it suits us.” What is front-limited car? Simply, a car’s which has as its limiting factor front-end grip. The impact this will have upon lap time will vary from circuit to circuit according to how much the layout demands of front grip. A circuit such as Bahrain demands a lot of the rear grip of the car, with repeated hard acceleration from relatively low speeds (Turns 1, 2, 4, 8, 10) and several long duration corners where the rears are under lateral load for a long time (Turns 6, 7, 11, 13, 14). So a front-limited car is not unduly punished.

The handling balance of all cars can of course by adjusted by mechanical and aerodynamic set-up, but there is invariably an aerodynamic sweet spot where the car’s efficiency (i.e. how little drag for how much downforce) is at its best. If the set-up to give the required handling balance for the circuit is within the efficiency sweet spot, that’s ideal. READ MORE: Fernando Alonso calls 2019 McLaren a step forward – but not enough to tempt him back to F1 But it can be that it falls outside – as with last year’s McLaren, for example, which needed a very inefficient rear wing setting to tame the car’s natural rear instability. That car was very much rear-limited and because the handling balance and efficiency ranges were so mismatched, no amount of development could get around that basic trait of the car. McLaren already knows that its 2019 car, the MCL34, is much closer to its ideal efficiency sweet spot when set up to give the driver the balance he needs. Some amount of development may yet be required to move its set-up range more certainly inside of that efficiency spot.