In the latest edition of Technology Weekly We discuss how McLaren dramatically overturned Red Bull’s dominance in 2024 starting with the Miami Grand Prix and how it was done. The advantage of Red Bull’s more sophisticated aerodynamics (the root of the team’s record-breaking performance in the previous two seasons) was more than outweighed by McLaren’s mastery of how to apply aeroelasticity to its front wing.
By unlocking the biggest aerodynamic bottleneck of this generation of cars, McLaren overtook the more sophisticated Red Bull in a spectacular move. Red Bull was unable to respond due to cost caps and other resource implications.
But until then, Red Bull had remained one step ahead of its rivals for more than two seasons. Here we look back at how they did it, how that era came to an end so suddenly, and how that raises an intriguing question for 2025.