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Has Jenson been sniffing the tyre air again? http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/118117 "This is what we need in the sport, someone that is going to challenge those Mercedes that are out in front. "I really do think that this is the team that can do that."
It's only going to be fair to judge them at all when they get their systems running up. There is perhaps a good reason they are saying stuff that sounds and looks bonkers right now, they know just how much power they are running down to. There are rumours they are running 230bhp down right now. Heard all sorts of figures ranging from 180bhp to close to 300bhp down. If you consider that, then consider Button was only a tenth away from qualifying ahead of Ericsson, it doesn't look quite so shabby. Approximately,230bhp is around 3.7 seconds in pure engine pace in qualifying trim, so take that off what they did compared to the pole time and they would have qualified 3rd, almost a second off of Rosberg in 2nd. By the time you consider all the mapping they can do to aid driveability, you can probably find another half second plus no bother if the driveability/ers off the corners is improved, all of a sudden they are in and around the Mercedes. If they are running closer to the 300bhp down figures (and the powerunit has the potential claimed...which tbh i do doubt massively on the basis that even if it does, they will struggle to exploit it this year and other teams will progress a little too...but anyway.....), but if that is anywhere even remotely close, then the situation isn't anywhere near as bad as claimed.
That looks spectacular. They messed up big time by insisting on exclusivity this year. Caterham and Toro Rosso, with their less tightly packaged cars were able to do a lot of valuable miles for Renault last season while Red Bull and Lotus were struggling. Magnussen's retirement may have been exposed in testing and sorted out if they were running another car. McLaren are going to be one of the few interesting stories this season though I think. I'm looking forward to seeing them rise up through the field as they pile on performance. I reckon they'll be in the midfield by Barcelona.
The problem is only having 4 engines per driver. I believe that once an engine has been used at an event non of it's parts can be changed. i.e if it is found they have a component that has broken and can be redesigned and rebuilt for improved reliability this new part can not be used on a 'used' engine. It can only be used on a new engine. So for example Riccardo's first engine failed so he has now used a second. The fix for the fault on the first engine can only be applied to engine 3 and 4. Same as any in year tokens can now only be used on engine 3 and 4. I see lots of penalties this year. If I were Honda I would be pushing the engines to the max and not worry about how many I broke. So then I could design out the unreliable components and improve them for performance. OK so you would write off this season but you should have a great engine by next season. As for the publicity, I am sure this could be spun that this is the Dream Developing in front of our eyes.
Yeah, agreed. Why not supply engines (fairly cheaply) to a back end team and use them to push the engines harder and get more data on what the problems were, and then have more chances to fix them. I think the arrogance of McLaren and Honda themselves are to blame, as they probably thought that between them they were big enough not to fail. How wrong they were.
I agree. At the end of the day, they are going to break engines this season regardless, and even turning them down, Magnussens went bang. They got valuable mileage though by doing so with Button, so maybe for the first race, given testing, trying to make sure they got mileage of some sorts was excuseable. Other teams are going to be getting penalties too eventually, so it might not really be as big an issue later in the season as people think when most folk will be taking penalties around the same time. Comes back to what i said on here when this deal was announced though, Honda, as a company, are very, very conservative these days and more brand conscious than racing conscious. I genuinely don't think they will ever turn the engine up full unless they knew beyond all doubt it was bulletproof. And even the Mercedes unit isn't that, so when will it happen? never is my guess. I really think they missed a huge trick with Caterham/Manor. They should have invested in one of them as a kind of Toro Rosso, banged (no reliability pun intended) a Honda engine in the back of it and gave the full seats to KMag and Vandoorne. Both their young drivers get (engine permitting) tonnes of mileage and f1 exposure, the power unit gets twice as many opinions, twice as much mileage to develop etc. Was bonkers they didn't do it.
It looks like they have made a small step forward here engine wise, but I just don't get all the in house hype about how good they think their chassis is.
The good thing for them is that so far this weekend they have actually compiled plenty of laps. Tomorrow will still be tough for them but the more they do the better things will get. There is a lot of work to do chassis wise to match the top teams but so much of it now revolves around the power-unit and 'driveability' that I think until they hit top revs on the Honda they will not maximise the chassis and aero setup.
I agree. Button was complaining that he couldn't get heat into the tyres in Malaysia in the dry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Unless the engine is that low powered it can't spin the tyres then it's the chassis that won't enable him to get the heat in the tyres. So not that great a chassis then?
More than a small step, they are 1.6 seconds closer to pole! A lot of their problems aside from lack of power right now driveability wise come from a lack of downforce and the power unit not being that smooth yet, not really the chassis. You can have a good handling car with not much grip. For what it's worth, the car, even now looks very responsive to turn in and even when it is sliding about a bit, looks fairly easy and predictable to control. I reckon it genuinely is McLarens best Chassis for many years, not that it is really saying much! the last couple especially have been rotten.
Agreed. It only really looks a handful on power but this is probably more down to the driveability of the engine than characteristics of the chassis. It's kind of like what Allison was saying about Ferrari earlier, it's easier to add power and downforce to a good handling car, than make a bad car handle better. I think once Honda get the software sorted the car will be a lot more driveable and allow the drivers to really push. Then it's just a case of upping the power and we should get some idea of where the McLaren chassis is at.
I suppose it's hard to say At present if the drivability of the engine is the issue over the ability of the chassis.
A good weekend for McLaren in the grand scheme of things? They did an awful lot of laps during practice and quali so they have really important data again. They definitely made a step forward- when do we think we wil see the next chunk of performance gain?
You would hope that they would make a similar step again for China, putting them into Q2 and racing in the mid pack, but then again the faster the car the more the law of diminishing returns applies. I do think the faster they go, the more unreliable they will become and realistically Europe (probably after the summer break) will be the earliest we will see a true race car. I'm still not 100% convinced on the outright pace jump from Aus - I think the likes of a Merc (and maybe others) were restricted by the tyres, but time will tell.
you would hope they stick with this design and evolve it instead of designing the entire car again. thats been Mclarens biggest flaw of the past 10 years. That and PR. I can see them getting ahead of Force India very soon.
Looking from the other side, with Ferrari PU improvements and the Renault unit not looking as horrific, Force India are in big trouble. I'm hoping for McLaren points within the next three races.
