There’s a lot to do this weekend at Silverstone – a circuit that’s very different to the two we’ve already sampled this month. So we caught up with Jose Manuel López, Lando Norris’ performance engineer, to understand the plan for practice at the British Grand Prix. Here’s what he had to say earlier, in FP1 commentary on the McLaren App and website…

Keeping up the good work

Even though this is the last day of July, we’re still at a very early point in this season. We’ve had three races and visited only two circuits, albeit very different ones. Silverstone will be our third datapoint to assess the competitiveness of our cars.

We’ll be continuing the work that we’ve been doing in Austria and Hungary, which is learning how to extract the maximum from our package. That applies equally to the drivers as to the engineers. The Friday programme at Silverstone will be about assessing the new aero package we are using this weekend, to ensure it is working as expected.

As usual, in FP1 we will be validating what we have learned in the wind tunnel. The two cars will run in slightly different specifications and do different set-up experiments, and once we’re happy that has delivered the data, they should converge for the rest of the weekend into what we think is the best configuration.

It’s all about balance

We’ll also be working hard to understand the tyres to find out what the limiting factors are. Silverstone has a really good range of corner types. There’s the low-speed ‘Arena’ section of the circuit, a couple of medium-speed corners and, as we know, a really nice higher-speed section as well.

Usually, before coming to Silverstone we’d have sampled a wide range of circuits, some of which will have had similar characteristics. This year we have less information – but we can say it has characteristics closer to the Red Bull Ring than to the Hungaroring.

What we have to do is find the right balance between low drag on the power-limited straights and the downforce we need to be fast in the corners. Overtaking is difficult at Silverstone and power sensitivity is high so, unlike the Hungaroring where we had maximum downforce, we need to find the correct drag level to be competitive on the straights.

No surprises

Moving on to tyres, we have the C1, C2 and C3 this weekend, which are the same compounds that were used last year and, on that basis, we expect very few surprises. We know these compounds really well – but there is still a great deal to study.

In terms of tyre degradation and tyre wear, this circuit is highly demanding for the left-hand side of the car. Traditionally, it’s a little more front-left limited but, depending on track conditions, the rear left can suffer a lot of wear and degradation also.

Whether we are limited by the front-left tyre or the rear-left tyre can depend on how severe the front-left grains – but it may also depend on set-up and what steps we take to protect that corner. This is something we will be studying closely.

Watching the weather

Having back-to-back races at Silverstone with the tyres going a step softer next week will be interesting – but it won’t affect how we approach this weekend. One thing that will influence us, however, is the weather.

The forecast suggests the track conditions are going to change, and whereas the temperature is likely to be around 30°C today, by Sunday it may have dropped to around 20°C. That’s going to be very challenging to understand and take into account.

With cooler temperatures you tend to lose the front end more than the rear – so what we understand about the tyres’ limitation on Friday, in the high-fuel runs, may not be entirely matched by what we see in the race. It’s going to be challenging to understand what the change in temperature does to our package and set-up. 

The other weather factor to consider is the wind. That’s also forecast to change significantly. Because Silverstone is very exposed, the direction of the wind can really affect the balance of the car in the corners and speed on the straights – but it wouldn’t be the British Grand Prix without interesting weather.

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