Ferrari Downplays Wind Tunnel Impact on McLaren Gains

Ferrari attributes McLaren’s success to solid work, dismissing claims that a new wind tunnel solely drove their progress this season.

Ferrari does not believe McLaren F1’s progress is solely due to their new wind tunnel. Jock Clear, the Scuderia’s performance engineer, is careful not to underestimate the work done by the Woking team to achieve this and is confident Ferrari can also succeed, despite an aging wind tunnel.

“Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that question, but I generally have a pretty good overall view of what’s going on, simply due to my experience,” Clear said. “It’s about the bigger picture, such as the accuracy of our wind tunnel and the potential impact of older tools.”

“I have no idea, and I wouldn’t say McLaren’s performance is because of that. They’ve simply done a good job this season. But in fact, we’ve closed the gap to a large extent. There are still circuits that suit them, but we’ve seen over the last two races that we’ve narrowed the gap again.”

Clear acknowledges that effort is required to make progress of this kind. In his view, Ferrari should be able to achieve it with their current infrastructure, and he believes that if the Scuderia falls behind in performance, they will need to reinvent themselves structurally.

“It’s just about development, and if over time we see that something seems to come back to our processes and with what we’re doing, we don’t seem able to keep up, then it’s a bigger decision that Fred [Vasseur, team principal] will need to make, with a lot of investment behind it.”