Vodafone McLaren Mercedes 2013

[dren]

As far as pay goes, Vettel is paid highly with bonuses.

[KingHamilton01]

So a lot of people talk about how McLaren have now been weakened as a team from the departure of both Hamilton and now Lowe. I wanted to take this opportunity to share some thought`s with everyone and see if you agree or disagree, perhap`s in wake of these departure`s this will mean McLaren will spend the next couple of years in transition.
The Question is where is McLaren`s biggest weakness? is it the team principal Whitmarsh doesn`t come across as being serious enough at times and then will state the obvious that the team need`s to perform better,then we have the Mercedes engine, there has been big discussion of recent about the fuel pump failure`s and even still after a modified part at the start of testing fail`s! generally regarded as a top engine but yet Renault better for driveability.

On the subject of the engine, if McLaren are entering a period of transition surely they should embrace it and look at change? I think they could look at going in house to build there own engine`s, surely they have the know how and facilities to do this but I don`t pretend to know anything about what sort of budget you would need to do this. The other option could be to look at another engine supplier and maybe McLaren could look at going back to using Honda engine`s? to forge a relationship with them instead of carrying on using Mercedes engines as surely in 2014 they will not help McLaren as much as they have in the past.

Finally the driver`s I as many view the 2013 as an important one for Jenson, I believe that with the tyre life and tyre preservation been more important than ever, this could be Jenson`s best opportunity for the championship. So if McLaren and Jenson fail does that mean they look elsewhere for another driver as he isn`t getting any younger that`s for sure. Im interested to know what people`s thought`s and opinion`s are regarding these subject`s and idea`s!

Look`s like Ive called it right, well see soon enough, surely will have to answer to all the media hype!

I may be wrong but I'll go out on a limp and say that Jenson isn't going to get it done. I mean a guy who gets lost doing set up work will be hot today, cold the next minute. You can't win a championship against redbull and vettel, or alonso unless you have a brawn type advantage with that sort of weekness. He got lost and had to look to barichello, did the same with hamilton, and now, he and sergio are supposedly having a hard time finding the best setup. I frankly think he doens't have a base set up from a good driver to fine tune for his magic and I expect them to struggle.

I don`t mean about jenson being champion, sorry I should have highlighted the part about honda engines, as much as it pain`s me to say Vettel is the man to beat, and winning it for a 4th time in a row devalues the sport for me! like the schumacher/ferrari dominance zzzzzzz!

[Nando]

Why does the process take so long for Lowe to move to Mercedes?

Can he not just quit the job on a 3 month notice, then when he´s a free agent, sign with Mercedes?
Seems guys switch positions very quickly in F1 except this time where it´s a year or so.

(i figured since he´s still at Mclaren i would post it here)

[Pierce89]

Why does the process take so long for Lowe to move to Mercedes?

Can he not just quit the job on a 3 month notice, then when he´s a free agent, sign with Mercedes?
Seems guys switch positions very quickly in F1 except this time where it´s a year or so.

(i figured since he´s still at Mclaren i would post it here)

Their contracts have a clause requiring them to sit out a certain period, besides he's still contracted to Mclaren.

[Godius]

Do you guys know why McLaren wasn't using their orange testing livery? They stopped using it a few years ago...

[Pup]

Apart from the original cars of course, the only time McLaren has used orange in testing is when changing sponsors - i.e., before the official unveiling of the new livery. I think the 12 and the 21 are the only cars that tested in orange.

Correction - the 13 used orange in testing, too - no idea why.

Just because, here's the 12 in orange (or a model of it at least)...


and the 13...


And the 21 (with a 20 thrown in for good measure - ahh, the days when test drivers could actually test)...

[Shakeman]

http://motorsportstalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... velopment/

Button trying to put positive spin on a car that isn't fast out of the blocks?

Does anyone believe that other teams won't be able to develop like McLaren? I'm pretty sure that's spurious as McLaren are the ones who've had to adopt the high chassis that other teams have been using as it was themselves that would've hit a development wall had they not followed suit.

We've seen this for too many years McLaren being able to develop a car throughout the season so it ends up being competitive after the title is lost, this article has a whiff of deja vu about it.

[SiLo]

Wish they would run in Bruce Mclaren Orange, it's a gorgeous colour and a lovely hark back to the founder. Although the chrome cars do look beautiful too...

[Dyanxx]

http://motorsportstalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... velopment/

Button trying to put positive spin on a car that isn't fast out of the blocks?

Does anyone believe that other teams won't be able to develop like McLaren? I'm pretty sure that's spurious as McLaren are the ones who've had to adopt the high chassis that other teams have been using as it was themselves that would've hit a development wall had they not followed suit.

We've seen this for too many years McLaren being able to develop a car throughout the season so it ends up being competitive after the title is lost, this article has a whiff of deja vu about it.

I don't understand why Mclaren continued to bring updates to the MP4-27 last season when the title was lost, and didn't start focusing more resources on the MP4-28 if they were going to take a radical approach to the new car anyway, it makes no sense.

If anything Red Bull have shown that they can also develop their cars a lot during the season, so this talk about them being able to develop the car more in the season compared to others, seems kinda irrelevant.

[CjC]

Ooh cluster flips

Not liking the feeling in this for Melbourne

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/105898

If it is abit slow it better fly by the time we get to the European races- abit like what happened in 2005

[Shakeman]

Ooh cluster flips

Not liking the feeling in this for Melbourne

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/105898

If it is abit slow it better fly by the time we get to the European races- abit like what happened in 2005

I posted this to the team thread, along the same lines.

http://motorsportstalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... velopment/

Button trying to put positive spin on a car that isn't fast out of the blocks?

Does anyone believe that other teams won't be able to develop like McLaren? I'm pretty sure that's spurious as McLaren are the ones who've had to adopt the high chassis that other teams have been using as it was themselves that would've hit a development wall had they not followed suit.

We've seen this for too many years McLaren being able to develop a car throughout the season so it ends up being competitive after the title is lost.

I hope Lowe leaves this particular feature of McLaren behind when he moves to Merc.

[CjC]

Think the reason why mclaren can develop so well is that they don't start with the fastest car and lowe's cars can fall into that categor.

Goss designed the car that won the opening round last year, he's designed this years too so you could argue that he has the same problem, but I'm writing this before we know who has won in Aus.

Suppose you could say that for any designer or team, Redbull and Newey last year didn't start with the fastest car and developed that into the title winner.

[Anon123]

Does anyone believe that other teams won't be able to develop like McLaren? I'm pretty sure that's spurious as McLaren are the ones who've had to adopt the high chassis that other teams have been using as it was themselves that would've hit a development wall had they not followed suit.

Some people at Mercedes (Nico and Lewis in particular) seem to think the W04 will be easy to develop throughout the season but they certainly look well positioned for a strong result in Melbourne unlike Mclaren (based purely on testing and comments from various sources/articles). If the Red Bull starts to struggle when it comes to development like it did in 2012 I expect Newey to come up with something as usual, I honestly thought he had run out of ideas in 2012 and then he came up with a DDRS that didn't seem to compromise the car setup at all.

[kalinka]

Suppose you could say that for any designer or team, Redbull and Newey last year didn't start with the fastest car and developed that into the title winner.

You could say too, that Newey didn't do anything special, and the title is lost not by falling behind RedBull, but failing to resolve realiability problems. We could add team errors to that, but I think even with those errors, a reliable car would get them a title last year anyway.
Maybe they are focusing more on reliability than on performance in 2013 ( at least at the beginning ). I hope they learned something from last season.

[Chuckjr]

We've seen this for too many years McLaren being able to develop a car throughout the season so it ends up being competitive after the title is lost.

SPOT ON.