Technical McLaren MP4-27 exhaust vents - legal or illegal?

That means nothing. As I mentioned, Mclaren and others have asked for CW's opinion in the past, which he has been only too happy to give, only for it to be made irrelevant when race meeting officials adjudged differently. All it takes is for one team to protest another's exhaust and it will be the scrutineers, not Charlie, who determine legality.

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Me too. I assume that the louvre assembly is some sort of variable deflector for testing purposes only, and that CW has seen and approved what lies beneath. If not, I don't see how it would be legal.

How can it be so difficult to write a rule that makes sense and then enforce it with clear cut decisions? Whoops, I forgot we were dealing with F1.

This should be fun to follow. I wonder how long these "exotic exhausts" will get.

I think this explains why

Offside is a law in football which states that if a player is in an offside position when the ball is touched or played by a teammate, he may not become actively involved in the play.

A player is in an offside position if he is closer to the opponent's goal line than both the ball and the second-to-last defender (which is usually the last outfield player), but only if the player is on his opponent's half of the pitch. "Offside position" is a matter of fact, whereas committing an "offside offence" occurs when the a player is "actively involved" which is subject to the interpretation of the referee. Goals scored after committing an offside offence are nullified if caught by the referee.

Or the one for girls

You're in a shoe shop, second in the queue for the till. Behind the shop assistant on the till is a pair of shoes which you have seen and which you must have.

The 'opposing' female shopper in front of you has seen them also and is eyeing them with desire.
Both of you have forgotten your purses.

It would be totally rude to push in front of the first woman if you had no money to pay for the shoes.

The shop assistant remains at the till waiting.

Your friend is trying on another pair of shoes at the back of the shop and sees your dilemma.

She prepares to throw her purse to you.

If she does so, you can catch the purse, then walk round the other shopper and buy the shoes.

At a pinch she could throw the purse ahead of the other shopper and, *whilst it is in flight* you could nip around the other shopper,
catch the purse and buy the shoes.

Always remembering that until the purse had *actually been thrown* it would be plain wrong to be forward of the other shopper.

I think the conversation would have been a bit more refined than "is it ok like this". I suspect it went more along the lines of "we have this testing setup that is going to allow us to try x, y and z before we build the final pieces. If we do x, y or z are they going to be ok?"

Charlie could easily have replied with, "well, as you know I can't say for certain until you present for scrutineering, but if you follow the rules and do x, y or z then you will be ok".

Looking at the rules again, I still say that the McLaren we saw last week is not in line with 5.8.4 but remain convinced that this is not the design they have told Whiting will be presented in Australia (and got the all clear for).

Teams can run whatever configurations they like in testing there are no regs as far as that is concerned so I would imagine that McLaren would have asked what is legal to race...

Having said that there is no point whatsoever in testing parts that are not legal..So why should the exhaust change before the start of the season unless they find something that works better, there is no point in grasping at straws here the macca's just aren't on the pace at the moment...

I humbly and respectfully disagree. There are numerous examples from the crazy aero rakes through the wires to get front wing flex to a whole load of data logging systems that go far beyond what is allowed during a proper race weekend. Testing is just that, testing.

Okay but I still say that testing illegal parts is counter productive considering how little testing time the teams have, maybe when there was unlimited testing allowed there may have been more value in it but not now in my most humble opinion that is...

This is something of a guess, but if say Mclaren were wanting to test various exhaust exit configurations it might be easier and cheaper to rig up a deflector which could easily be adjusted on a test day (but which would clearly be illegal to race with) to simulate alternative scenarios, than to actually use a number of different tailpipes, which would be expensive to produce and take half a day to swap over, being very hot to the touch.

I think people are focusing far to much on the exhaust it is very unlikely that the exhaust is responsible for the fundamental lack of speed in the car, I think McLaren have a problem just like they did last year.

And considering they wanted to be competitive from the start (which all teams do) then they had better start concentrating on the larger issues and stop pissing about with the exhaust system,

These teas are working on a completely different level from me so I can't really begin to speculate as to their true purpose in testing. These are the geniuses that came out with the F-duct amongst other innovations. They know what they are doing, all we can do is speculate. Which is a lot of fun I must say.

Who says the MP4/27 has a fundamental lack of speed? I don't see how anyone can know that at the moment, except perhaps the Mclaren team. Hamilton has been pretty much on a par with Vettel which is not a bad benchmark, and for most of the four test days they were quicker than the Ferrari. But then it's only testing, so comparisons at this stage are pretty meaningless anyway.

This thread is about the legality or illegality of the Mclaren exhaust system, that's why people are focusing on the exhaust.

Made up nonsense. If you don't mind me saying so.

I don't mind at all

The other possibility, which I must admit I hadn't considered before, is that the vanes behind the tailpipe on the Mclaren are just on or outside the extremity of the 'cone', which is actually quite a narrow one as shown on the scarbs diagrams posted earlier by jez101 (post #30). If that were the case, they might be legal not just for testing but also for racing.