There is no silver bullet answer and, instead, much of the brilliance that made the RB18 and RB19 cars so dominant lay in how all its ideas worked together as a complete package.
Trying to get to the bottom of that would require tapping into the brain power of some of its key architects – and chief technical officer Adrian Newey and technical director Pierre Wache are not the sorts who will willingly give anything like that away.
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So McLaren’s signing last year of Rob Marshall, Red Bull’s former chief designer, was viewed as a big boost for the squad in helping it get on tap a good understanding of what one of its key opponents was up to.
The same was true of McLaren also luring Ferrari’s former head of concept David Sanchez who, with Marshall, forms part of the new technical management triumvirate alongside Peter Prodromou that has been up and running since January 1 this year.
From one perspective, it would be easy to think that McLaren would have loved Marshall and Sanchez to walk in and offer the Woking-based squad a list of things it has done wrong and needs to change on its car to help make a Red Bull beater.
And if that were the case, the fact that both men see the concept of the new MCL38 as heading in the direction that they think is right, would appear to be a bit of a let down.
But that's not how McLaren team principal Andrea Stella views things. Instead, he makes clear that acknowledgement that his outfit is on the right track is a massive boost to its bid to make that extra leap it needs to be fighting right at the front.
Source: Autosport