Got your pass? Check. McLaren kit? Check. Okay, good, now switch off your phone and follow us through the glass doors and into the Paddock Performance Centre. Grab a coffee on your way in, and we’ll get started with our engineering briefing for the Italian Grand Prix.

We may be returning to the home of our most recent victory, but that doesn't mean we'll be taking our knowledge of the circuit for granted. It's expected that the 2022 machinery will fare much differently around the Autodromo Nazionale Monza than our car last season, and that forms a large part of what we will be exploring in this weekend's engineering briefing.

With 80% of the lap spent at full-throttle, Monza is a power-sensitive high-speed circuit that favours low-downforce, with several heavy braking zones. Will Joseph is leading this weekend's briefing and will look to explain that and more, providing you with the need-to-know information.

Take notes if you need them, but please keep them to yourself.

Engineer: Will Joseph
Event: Italian Grand Prix
Circuit: Autodromo Nazionale Monza

Background

Monza’s great: The fans are pretty cool, and the atmosphere is really good, so even if we're not going to relive the amazing result that we had last year, it's still a classic race that everyone enjoys… but from a performance perspective, it can be challenging.

Our plans depend very much on what the weather does – but if we assume we get dry running in, then the plan involves a mix of Monza-specific set-up work, and some experiments designed to pay off in the longer term.

Regardless of what we discover, with these new cars, it won’t be like days gone by where we could clatter over the kerbs, straight-line the chicanes and continue on our way. Everything is different in 2022, and there’s lots to learn.

Key points

1 | Downforce

We want to do some learning about the characteristics of the car and how it behaves with different downforce levels. The best way to do that is to impose a big step difference in downforce. Clearly, around Monza, it will make you incredibly slow down the straight and probably unnecessarily quick through the corners – but that is part of the test.

It's a compromise to your practice session because it takes about half an hour to change the rear wing, and we'll have to do some stiffness and ride-height changes to go with it, but it's very important learning – especially for next year's car development.

2 | Rear-wing testing

We also have some work to do with the rear wing we intend to race. This is the wing that made its debut in Spa, but it’s not the case that it’ll run in quite the same configuration. There’s a Gurney to remove and the possibility of trimming the wing. Likewise, there are trims for the front wing to ensure we get the aero balance right.

3 | Tyre choice

Beyond the wings, it’s all the normal things. Tyre understanding is at the top of that list. Monza is usually a one-stop race, and all three of the compounds look like potential race tyres, with, in the models, only a couple of seconds separating the Soft-Medium race from the Medium-Hard and the Soft-Hard options.

We’ll want to verify that those models are correct, so a fairly decent run on all of them is important.

4 | Overtaking

We would also like to have a look at the potential for overtaking. It’s a difficult subject to study in practice because – usually – most of the cars on track are running with tyres of the same age, which often isn’t what you find when you’re attempting to overtake in the race. But we need to do it anyway.

Often in the race scenario, you’re trying to overtake someone when you’ve just had a pit-stop: can we overtake the car that is still out on their first set, with our fresh set? In some places, we find that it's been quite difficult, in others, it’s been possible. And so, we'd like to fill in some of that learning.

5 | Chicanes

Another thing to consider is Monza’s famous chicanes – or rather, the kerbs around them. The stiffer we run, the less inclined you are to take more kerb – to the point where an incredibly stiff car might avoid the kerb.

The Rettifilo chicane is a good example. If you hit the kerb awkwardly or the car doesn't settle quickly afterwards, it then affects your traction, which penalises you all the way around Curva Grande, costing time all the way to the Roggia chicane.

How the drivers approach the chicanes depends on set-up. In practice, you’re trying to figure out: am I quicker around the lap, softening the car and straightening the line through the chicanes, getting a better exit, or am I better-off running stiff, avoiding the kerb altogether, but getting a downforce and drag benefit elsewhere around the lap?

It will be a case of the drivers experimenting today with both of those options, weighing up the relative merits of each. To complicate things a little, there are a few big bumps around Monza to negotiate as well. Those will have to be understood and factored in.

Miscellaneous

Other things: the normal tasks of dialling-in the car set-up and setting the ride heights. This year, the lower you run the car, the more load it delivers – and also, the less drag you have. It makes you want to run the car stiff, because, effectively, then the car’s just lower for longer – but there are compromises to be had by running too stiff.

It’ll be a matter of exploring those stiffnesses and ride-heights. We also have to monitor all the skid and the plank wear. We have found that we see very large increases in wear coming unexpectedly, so we want to get a good read of that to make sure we’re in a good place.

Briefing complete. Time for Lando and Daniel to head out onto the track so we can collect some data and put our hard work to the test.

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