Current McLaren

Arguably one of the big teams in Formula One but lately they don't seem to be able to get the basics right.
Some of their strategy and decisions in the last few years has left more than a few observers scratching their heads.

Just a few for starters:

• Leaving Kimi out on a badly flat-spotted tyre, resulting in it exploding on the last lap.
• Leaving Hamilton out on tyres so badly worn they were down to the canvas; Bridgestone themselves demanded that McLaren bring him in and McLaren refused, keeping him out for a few more laps. That decision arguably cost Hamilton the first rookie WDC and is one which will haunt him and McLaren for the rest of their days.
• Not sending Button and Hamilton out to get banker laps in during Q1.
• Sending Hamilton out on used tyres in Q3, with rain forecast, meaning it would be impossible to set a fast lap time on his second attempt on new tyres.

Their major updates seem to send them further down the grid, instead of challenging for pole positions and wins. As the season progresses they tend to get worse before getting better, by which time it is generally too late.

It's often said of them "write them off at your peril", but is this necessarily true?

The last time they won the WCC was in 1998 and their last WDC was 2008, before that 1999.
Their days of regularly winning championships seem to be well and truly behind them.

It's all well and good coming up with reasons why they haven't won championships.
The fact remains though, they have won just one WDC in the last 12 years.

So where to now for McLaren?

(I wrote this in rather a hurry so I will flesh it out when I have more time.)

 

[Brogan]

The fundamental question, of course, regards the decision not to evolve the 2012 car.

According to Whitmarsh it was "unevolvable" (yes, that is a word ).

I struggle to understand that claim though; anything can be constantly tweaked and updated.

 

[Senna's_right_foot]

Having just watched Ted's Notebook on Sky F1, Ted Kravitz said that Martin Whitmarsh had not ruled out the possibility of returning to last year's car, something which I think ExtremeNinja mentioned earlier in this thread, although he said they would prefer to persevere with the new car but admitted last year's car is an option.
Also, somewhat strangely, according to Kravitz he asked Whitmarsh about the McLaren simulator. Apparently McLaren had thought the new car was incredibly fast as the simulator data had suggested it would be. However Whitmarsh admitted that the data gleaned from the simulator work with this year's car was taken using last year's tyre data and last year's DRS rules. As a result when it became clear the new tyres differed in performance/degridation/working window from last year, McLaren have had to effectively start again from scratch with the new tyre data. It seems McLaren underestimated how different the tyres would be from last year and have basically designed the car around the wrong tyres.

 

[Brogan]

Well that makes no sense at all.

We have been talking here for months about the new tyre profiles, weights and compound hardness.
Not to mention the fact that DRS is only available in the zones during qualifying now.

If what Whitmarsh said is true then they really have no fucking idea what they are doing.

 

[Senna's_right_foot]

Brogan If you have Sky F1 the programme is repeated at 2.15am and again at 6.30pm tomorrow, he mentions it about 2-3 minutes from the end, just as he's taking the piss out of Nikki Lauda for his baggy jeans and sponsors cap.
I've suspected your last sentence to be true since about Spain last year to be fair.

 

[Il_leone]

I 'heard Suzi and DC mention about last year's car

It does seem odd given last years season ending car was the fastest to have gone for something completely zooming down the other end

the gap to the front is nearly 2 seconds a lap which is a lot of time to make up but if anyone can its Mclaren

they were lucky to score points today owing a part to Button being a big roadblock but also the retirement of Rosberg and the non start of Hulkenberg helps

 

[The Pits]

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine this morning, and he passed on the benefit of his wisdom regarding McLaren's woes.

Last years car had a low Chassis, which is what provided the ultimate limit to performance, as there is only so much air that you can get underneath, therefore out of the back, and this provides an upper limit to downforce. the optimisation of diffusers over the last few years has meant that this limit had not yet been reached, but with the changes to regs in the exhaust area, he believes this is why McLaren felt they needed a change. The front suspension is merely a consequence of the change (not fully necessary apparently)

The real issue is that with the larger volume of air, and the exhaust plume remaining the same as last year (no change to engine regs or exotic mapping) it is more difficult to keep this air contained within the control of the diffuser, with an amount of leakage around the edges, which would previously have been restricted better by the warm air curtain from the exhaust.

It means that the McLaren can now try and exploit the larger flow of air, which means that the ultimate performance ceiling is higher than it would have been last year, but the mechanisms to control the downforce need to be understood. The fact that the car was quick at Jerez when the ride height was too low speaks volumes too.

The car will also be very sensitive to attitude changes, as the centre of pressure will change hugely depending on whether the diffuser is stalled or not.

Not sure this is 100% accurate, but it sounds sensible to me.

 

[Brogan]

That makes sense, but building a whole new car for one season does not.

At least with the old car they had a chance of challenging for wins, etc.
This one is so far off the pace, unless they can widen the operating window or make some drastic improvements quickly, they will find themselves halfway down the pit lane next year.

 

[sushifiesta]

The first, and only, experience the teams got with the new tyres before testing was at Brazil last year so it makes sense to me that McLaren would design their new car based largely on last year's tyres, possibly with a few tweaks, as even by Brazil the development of the new car was probably at quite an advanced stage. The same applies to all the other teams I imagine but McLaren seem to have managed to build a car that is very sensitive to setup. The regulations for next year in terms of aerodynamics are not so different now either so if they can find a way to make the car work it will still be useful beyond this season.

The other thing is that from the Spanish to the European GPs last year, for example, Jenson qualified 11th, 13th, 10th and 9th whereas Lewis qualified 1st (ignoring the fuel issue), 4th, 2nd and 2nd. Jenson couldn't find the performance in the car and got lost with setup but Lewis could. Without wanting to start the whole Lewis vs. Jenson debate, what could Hamilton do with a car that, from the sounds of it, is fundamentally quick but very sensitive?

 

[The Pits]

Much of the aero regs are relatively static for next year, though, so a lot can be carried forward, and I don't know how much the other cars have moved on.

I agree though, that even though we have had one race, it does seem a long way back.

 

[cider_and_toast]

It sounds like McLaren have fallen in to the Lotus 79 / 80 trap. Instead of developing the weaker areas of the 79, Lotus went for a wholesale "if some is good, more is better approach" and left themselves with the type 80 which on paper looked superb but in practise had an unpredictable centre of gravity, porpoised around its skirts from front to back, was far too sensitive to changes in pitch, set up and track (erm... sound familier?) and over all produced a car that only lasted a handful of races before the team reverted to the Type 79 for the rest of the 1979 season.

The net result, by the time an updated and improved version of the Type 79 hit the streets (the type 81 in 1980) a whole year had gone by and things had moved on. It took Lotus another 2 years before they returned to the top step of the podium (Austria 1982).

 

[Senna's_right_foot]

http://www1.skysports.com/watch/video/sports/formula-1/8572758/ted

10:20 onwards. Incidentally, he also says the fast time at the Jerez test was due to a suspension part being fitted the wrong way round which gave an artificially low ride height.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

Ha ha. Fitted wrong way round! That's comical.

 

[Brogan]

I knew the super fast lap was due to low settings, which couldn't be used in a race, but I didn't know that was the resaon.

 

[racecub]

I'd read that a couple of days ago, about the wrong way round piece, not sure when McLaren discovered it though.
If this car has a very narrow operating window and difficult set -up, then having Jenson as the lead driver will be a double whammy. I can't see this sorting out easily, no wonder Whimarsh looks worried. And again, I can't understand why the big wholesale change when so much changes the following year? If it is an attempt to tune the car more to Buttons style, well it hasn't worked, and towards the end of the season he wast that far off the pace anyway. It's very difficult to understand the logic.

 

[Mephistopheles]

Not going to encourage many free thinkers to the organisation is it? And for a compnay which is supposed to thrive on innovation and prototyping it sounds like they are trying to kill it off.

Does wearing shorts make you brainier then...

 

[Bill Boddy]

But there are not any big changes to anything but the engine for next season, so why not build a new car this year?

 

[ExtremeNinja]

...and exhaust position which is pretty big considering how the teams are using the gasses to blow the floor at the moment.

 

[The Pits]

There have been large changes to the exhaust regs for the last few seasons, I am not sure they alone would necessitate a huge redesign of the whole car. If they were going to bring in the low nose that was previously mooted, then I would agree.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

...are they not bringing in the low nose any more?

 

[The Pits]

That was canned, I believe, aero regs are generally the same as they are this season, with the exception of the exhausts

Edit: although I am not sure how much of these regs are currently rubber stamped.