Are they lining him up for a shock entry to F1 if Lewis jumps ship? Or will he be the next Gary Paffett. Only time will tell.
from autosport. Sebastian Vettel says he is impressed by long run pace of new McLaren Formula 1 car By Simon Strang Tuesday, February 21st 2012, 19:41 GMT Sebastian Vettel has singled out McLaren as the rival team that he thinks is in the best shape at the start of the second pre-season test at Barcelona in Spain. The double world champion made clear that while it is still too early to divine a pecking order from what had taken place so far in testing, he felt that McLaren appeared to have got an early handle on its MP4-27. "I think McLaren looked very strong today," Vettel told reporters after ending the session fastest of all with a time of 1m23.265s - some 0.3s quicker than Hamilton managed. "For the rest it is too early. "I haven't seen all the lap times yet, I have only had a couple of looks on the long runs that Lewis did today – they seemed to be quite interesting. "At this stage we are not really talking about the championship for sure. I don't think there is anybody here trying to do worse than last year, so we are trying to do what we did last year, but it's a long way from now." When asked about whether he had a car to challenge for a third title, he added: "To be honest I haven't seen much of other cars on the track. "Obviously I can judge for myself that the feeling [on my car] is fine but I don't know whether that is good enough or not. I think the McLaren looks quite competitive. I think they didn't go for one lap at all but they did long runs etcetera and they looked fairly competitive, so I think they will be strong straight from the beginning of the season. "I think we saw in Jerez Lotus was quite a surprise, whether they can keep it up or not, I don't know. Today they didn't run much. "Ferrari is a bit of a secret at this stage and nobody knows whether they are really good or really bad – and I don't know what other people think about us, so we will have to wait and see."
Tom Blomqvist had joined the McLaren Young Driver Programme. http://www.mclaren.com/page/blomqvist-joins-mclaren-young-driver-programme
Have to say that since the arrival of Lewis I've not rated any of the young drivers in Mclaren's programme but having seen son of Stig - Tom Blomqvist race in Formula Renault UK I have to say he looks like a pretty good prospect as long as he keeps his eye in!
Now here's an interesting thing in Mclaren's top 50 driver Kimi Raikkonen comes in at No.15 and Gerhard Berger at No.14. The criteria they are judged on is "performance whilst driving for Mclaren" - can anyone explain that then? Oh, and Mark Blundell is placed higher than Villeneuve and Piquet Now I know they only ever drove once for Mclaren but that should be enough to rank them higher the old cucumber down the trousers man.
Raikkonen being only 15th on McLaren's best 50 is ridiculous. He's joint 6th in terms of wins for McLaren and arguably should have had 2 WDCs during his stint with them but was let down by machinery.
Whitmarsh has been talking about changes to the McLaren nose He says this it is not an admission that their concept is wrong, but is to maximise rear downforce. "We removed the under-nose splitter, which probably enhabces the efficiency of the rear end. If we get a lot of downforce at the rear end then we may go back the other way, but where we are in the development cycle suggests this route is beneficial" Now I know Im a little paranoid when it comes to Whitmarsh, and my technical knowledge is not the greatest. So please can someone convince me that this is not moving the car massively into Buttons territory and away from what Lewis likes? Believe me, I would like to be wrong in my thoughts.
Don't panic. As Sly says, more downforce will be beneficial to both drivers. Just because LH prefers a twitchier rear end or more oversteer doesn't mean they can't set up his car that way, to an extent.
Well, presumably it will mean sacrificing downforce at the front for more downforce at the back, otherwise what was the point of the splitter in the first place? From that I guess you could say that the car will move more towards Button's style, as less front grip makes the car more prone to understeer than oversteer. In reality, maybe they just had too much front grip and making this change will result in a better balanced car. Or perhaps they've done it because of what the circuit is like. Who knows, not me!
Front downforce should not be affected, as the change is behind the front wing. My guess is that they have done some sums on the way the air is channelled to the rear of the car, and with the sidepod changes from last year, the solution they had may not have been optimum I would not expect a reduction in downforce in a fundamental way in order to improve balance, as this would indicate serious issues, and the majority of balance issues can be dealt with through trim changes. One thing Lewis has said before is that the McLaren has never really had a planted rear end, and this is something he should approve of.
