myurr wrote:timbo wrote:TheRMVR wrote:But the Mclaren does look very stiff and bumpy. I never saw Hamilton make as many mistakes as he did today.
Maybe that is something similar to Bahrain this year?
I wonder, maybe they have to increase their ride because of bumps too much and when they do, the floor loses much more than on other cars.
It was stated on the BBC coverage that the McLaren aero is very sensitive to rake - as in hide height changes at the rear relative to the front. I'm guessing that this makes them sensitive to ride height changes as the fuel burns off, hence having to run stiffer.
I think this sound about right, it seems to make sence. People used to comment on how the MP4-25 appears to be able to follow other cars more closley. This suggests to me that it produces a bigger percentage of its total downforce from the floor, relative to perhaps Red Bull and Ferrari.
If we look at diffuser volume alone then I think everyone agrees the McLaren appears to have a higher diffuser volume and steeper ramp angle compared to RedBull and Ferrari. We know that wings are sensitive to yaw, and the floor is sentitive to ride height variations, so if the MP4-25's floor contibutes more to the total downforce on it than the RB6 or F10, then it should be more sensitive to pitch variation than the RB6 or F10. This should lead the team to using a harder setup to reduce pitch variation.
At Albert Park I had a tour of the garage the McLaren mechanics were using to do work on the MP4-23 that was used for the ultimate speed comparison demonstation. Naturally I got to speak with some of the engineers and one of the guys said to me how he loved working on the 23 because it was such an easy car to setup. He said to me that it had a very wide 'sweetspot' and that they could set it up a little bit outside the optimal zone and it would still be quick. He also said to me that it was quite difficult to setup the 25, that its 'sweetspot' was very narrow, and that it was particularly difficult to set it up to ride kerbs well.
At the time I couln't put the connections together, but now it seems that this years car, was compromised right from the initial design stages to take full advantage of the double-deck diffuser, making the floor more effective. Perhaps this has constrained the team to less than ideal suspension setup. Who knows, I'm probably wrong, but I don't I'm too far off the mark.