Indeed. Only Lotus has been able to gain up to a second in something like four races, and that's because they know exactly where their car is bad and the net gains are obviously going to be bigger. Just the raw logic of what's required to gain this 'average' lap time increase shows Whitmarsh's 'estimates' up as total crap. Maybe he's under more pressure than we realise?mith wrote:I was talking about gains over previous iterations of MP4/25. If they was faster of around 4 seconds over course of the season, we would see much better qualifying times on the same track year by year. I didn't saw anyone qualifying 4 second faster than last year's record.
To put this into perspective, various teams are naturally having a look at things like Red Bull's exhaust driven diffuser set up. A few teams have estimated that to be worth perhaps three or four tenths alone, so it's an area ripe for development assuming teams can start now and move it along at a fair pace. Given that this will take tens of millions in investment and probably took Red Bull months of research and development work, according to Martin Whitmarsh we're supposed to believe that McLaren is gaining the equivalent of a Red Bull exhaust diffuser's worth of time in additional development per each successive race.
Errrrr, no.Gaining a couple of tenths over a handful of races through development is considered good going at the front, however they happen to measure that average lap time. Additionally, there is no tyre war now remember.
