Vodaphone McLaren Mercedes MP4-24

[ringo]

If you consider the drivers and car combination and not just the car; i would not put Williams in the top 4 teams. It seems they can easily be bumped down the order by Mclaren when it comes to the races themselves.

[lkocev]

Shanghai was an absolutly incredible race, and in my opinion an exellent display from McLaren, 5th and 6th are excellent results. Although I don't think that was purely because of an improved performance, it does appear McLaren have clawed back a few tenths. McLaren made the one-stop strategy work for them very well, and I think a good race from both there drivers put them where they finished.

I have been a Heikki fan for quite some time now, and I think that yesterday was a perfect example of how good he can be in difficult conditions. Through out the whole race we basicly never saw much or heard much commentary about him, aside perhaps from seeing one nastly looking moment which he caught quickly. As another poster put it, Hekki's and Lewis' races were a perfect example of the 'turtle and hare' idea. I think that 5th is great testiment to Heikki's faultless performance and disciplined professional race, keeping it on the circuit, putting in good consistent laptimes, making a one-stop strategy work well, and generally picking up the pieces when other drivers dropped them.

I really hope that the car performance actually is better and that they can carry that through to the next race, but for some reason I have a feeling that might not be the case. I think that the result was more or less down to excellent driving from both drivers (despite a few of Hamilton's spins), and very good team tactics and racing strategy. Hopefully I'm wrong...

[De Jokke]

http://www.itv-f1.com/news_article.aspx?id=45634

[Henning]

http://www.itv-f1.com/news_article.aspx?id=45634

How lazy. Just a link with no explanation.

For everybody else: The link is a story from ITV-F1 about how they are not giving up development of this year's car

[De Jokke]

http://www.itv-f1.com/news_article.aspx?id=45634

How lazy. Just a link with no explanation.

For everybody else: The link is a story from ITV-F1 about how they are not giving up development of this year's car

Or I could reverse your sentence: How lazy, expecting a full description, just shut up, stop irritating other people and check the link dude. If it doesn't interest you (because of no description) then don't check it. Jeezes...

[Richard]

Whitmarsh acknowledges the team’s recovery is made harder by the fact that all the sport’s squads possess significant financial muscle, but insists this doesn’t mean McLaren throws the towel in

... errr don't McL have nearly double the funding of the teams next to, and behind, them on the grid (except those red cars at the back )?

"We have double diffusers in our wind tunnel and frankly from the very first moment we put one in we have a performance advantage,” he said.

“But clearly you can increase that advantage by optimising the package and one of the tough dilemmas that quite a few teams are facing at the moment is to what extent do you now start to redesign the rear suspension, the back of the car, the transmission to actually optimise for this particular philosophy.

“If you choose to do that clearly you are a good way through the season before you are going to see those benefits so in the meanwhile can you get 80% of the potential benefit of this concept within your existing packaging constraints, and that’s the trade-off we’re doing.

“The gains are sufficient that I suspect we will see forms of double diffusers on nearly all of the cars in Spain

Which translates as we're updating our car as quick as we can, and also devloping a complete new car at the same time... with acknowlegement that "a few" poorer teams can't afford to do both.

for those of us who are late to the game we will see further steps as we are obliged to freeze design and implement because there is a reasonable performance opportunity there.”

Does this mean "don't mess with fine tuning the design, there's enough benefit to implementing the first protype"? ... or is there some sort of mid-season design freeze in the rules?

Final q - I thought wind tunnel testing is limited this year? Won't that hamper development?

[Ratatouille]

I think that what MW wanted to explain is that just by putting a complete double deck diffuser the performance advantage is big enough to put the into Spain. The hard part will be getting the maximum from it until the very end. I do agree Mcl will work on two concepts. One short term concept will be putting a double diffuser on the existing design, and later by the last third of the season or so put the "new" car which will also serve as the basis for next season. If at that point the interim car is good enough to fight for the championship only time will tell.

As for the freeze, he means there's a point in a project where you decide to freeze the design in order to enter production. It's not as if they can keep changing everything at the last minute. Every project has to go through these phases.

[ISLAMATRON]

Extended deck diffusers will definitely be banned for next year... corner speeds are already too high(in Mad MAx's estimation), the diffusers for 2010 might actually be smaller than the one on the MP4/24 at launch.

All this diffuser stacking will be a 1 year affair. So I doubt that any of this line of development will make it into next years car.

[bar555]

IF FIA is planning to change again diffuser dimensions , it would mean that teams are spending money to develop DDD or TDD for nothing as DDD would be used till the end of 2009 What an irony

I am really confused about FIA cost cut policy

[ISLAMATRON]

IF FIA is planning to change again diffuser dimensions , it would mean that teams are spending money to develop DDD or TDD for nothing as DDD would be used till the end of 2009 What an irony

I am really confused about FIA cost cut policy

The FIA didnt mandate the DDD/TDD's, they merely allowed the TWG to make up the rules and those guys left in the loophole... which now I anticipate the FIA will close in the name of safety because the cars are already faster than last years.

Of course the FIA could have banned them way back in JAN when the issue first came up on those same grounds but they decided not to, and that will cost the teams alot of money to develope the DDD's for only one year.

[kilcoo316]

IF FIA is planning to change again diffuser dimensions , it would mean that teams are spending money to develop DDD or TDD for nothing as DDD would be used till the end of 2009 What an irony

I am really confused about FIA cost cut policy

That was exactly the cost argument made by the likes of Renault.


The lack of action by the FIA early on led to this problem. The loophole should have been slammed shut when the first enquiry went in last year.

[De Jokke]

Whitmarsh on the diffuser that will be used this weekend: ''In Bahrain we have an adaption of our conventional diffuser. It brings a few 'points' of downforce, but it's not a major step forward.''

On not yet having found the time gain of the double-decker diffuser in the windtunnel: ''It's a difficult area. If we would have started with this development a year ago, then the entire car would have been designed around it. Now we're forced to make compromises. We cannot modify the rear of the car any way we want.''

[sticky667]

IF FIA is planning to change again diffuser dimensions , it would mean that teams are spending money to develop DDD or TDD for nothing as DDD would be used till the end of 2009 What an irony

I am really confused about FIA cost cut policy

That was exactly the cost argument made by the likes of Renault.


The lack of action by the FIA early on led to this problem. The loophole should have been slammed shut when the first enquiry went in last year.

OWG did it to themeselves when Ross put it on the table and they declined. of course, hindsight is a b1tch now.

[ISLAMATRON]

http://premium.f1-live.com/f1/photos-hi ... po_018.jpg

[Vasco]

I was wondering whether it is possible add a wing or some sort of a vane inside the sidepod before the radiator to direct some airflow down towards the KERS unit....the current inlet used by Macca to cool their KERS looks a bit crude and possibly has a drag penalty.