McLaren MP4-26 Mercedes

[myurr]

And in the interestes of F1 in general I would rather they pushed the boat out and tried something different but lost, than if they just played it safe or copied one of their competitors.

Ferrari may beat them this year, but christ is there car dull and uninspiring. It's the same car as last year, tweaked a little bit, with some ideas copied from others. The only innovative thing they've done is move the rear dampers forward a bit. And Red Bull aren't much better.

[JB2011]

Hi, new member here. I've been reading this thread since Valencia and it's very interesting, so thank you. I've just signed up because I've had a thought about the McLaren exhaust system based on this photo.



I was wondering if anyone thinks it's possible to create suction using the exhaust gases by flowing them across a slot in the floor? Sort of like a fan car? (do the rules allow a hole in the floor?) Sometimes vacuum cleaners have slots in the lances and if you put your hand over it, it gets sucked in. Would this create an advantage without a much lower floor? Sorry I'm not an engineer, I'm just really interested in how stuff works.

My theory is that the U bend in the pipes also angles them downwards slightly towards the bottom of the car. On the left, the shape of the floor seems to follow the shape of the pipe. If the exhaust gases are then flowed over slots in the floor, could the whole lot then be routed up to exit the car through the cooling duct in the middle/rear of the engine cover and flow into the lower portion of the rear wing? We've seen a lot of changes to this cooling duct so it does appear to be linked to the system.

As the rear of some of the other cars is smaller compared to the McLaren, maybe they have room for this arrangement under their larger engine cover.

James

[Richard]

Hi Seg - the thing about the F duct is that it did work because most other teams copied it. Perhaps one could argue that McLaren paid the innovators penalty where the invention takes up more resource than copying.

However, last year's car appeared to suffer from a very stiff set up which one could say was due to an underperforming floor/diffuser design. We also know that they didn't resolve it over the whole of the season, so that would infer it was a pretty fundamental part of the design that couldn't be changed easily.

So they had a performance advantage with the f-duct but a disadvantage with the stiff ride. One positive and one negative. Your hypotheses is that focussing on that positive prevented resolution of the negative feature. That may be the case, but the fact that they never managed to resolve the stiffness problem all season would indicate that it was a feature that was never going to go away. So it is equally likely that if they'd abandoned the F-duct they would have ended up with a car with a negative feature and no compensating positive feature.

I'm not saying your hypotheses is right or wrong, rather that it is not a simple black or white choice ... a bit like the pull/push rod debate!

Some teams tinker and play with variations every week, others focus on reliability. Different strokes for different folks. Isn't that the fascination of F1?

.....

Ps - I think some of the reaction you get is because you also include comments inferring that teams are clueless or panicking. Clearly a team finshing second in the WCC is not clueless. I recall you saying that the pitot rakes were evidence of panic, which is odd because they were clearly prefabricated long before testing started. Now we see other teams doing the same, so are they all panicking too?

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

And in the interestes of F1 in general I would rather they pushed the boat out and tried something different but lost, than if they just played it safe or copied one of their competitors.

Ferrari may beat them this year, but christ is there car dull and uninspiring. It's the same car as last year, tweaked a little bit, with some ideas copied from others. The only innovative thing they've done is move the rear dampers forward a bit. And Red Bull aren't much better.

Myurr I concur.

But Mclaren may have pushed the boat out a tad too far. As in with the Mclaren MP4-18, that never raced.
I hope we see Mcaren competitive this year doing their own thing, It will breed more innovation IMO.

[horse]

But Mclaren may have pushed the boat out a tad too far. As in with the Mclaren MP4-18, that never raced.
I hope we see Mcaren competitive this year doing their own thing, It will breed more innovation IMO.

At least the sidepod arrangement is an innovation that will not be a FIA/FOTA enforced dead end for them. Think about it, they had the best KERS in 2009 - Banned. Then the best F-duct in 2010 - Banned. These crazy sidepods at least have genuine development potential, which is something McLaren struggled to produce with last years gizmos. It will be interesting to see if they still maintain a KERS advantage, also.

[marcush.]

Mclaren have certainly found some confidence in brewing their own soup and to me it sounds like a good idea to have your own line of development.To me it seems quite unlikely that in year 3 of the new regs already the cars converge to 1 solution .That´s 12 teams with say 4to 5 outstanding technical people so around 60 brains will come up with one solution to a complex equation with multiple variables?Very unlikely.

[ecapox]

So you guys would rather have McLaren be innovative, wasteful, and lose, than to use a tried and true design and win the championship?

The MP4-26 is radical, but i wouldnt call it a "looker" and in all honesty we dont even know how competitive it is going to be. These testing days are useless to gauge who will be at the top.

I hope for their sake that they have a competitive car and i do think their design is interesting. But if they build something innovative and lose, it was a complete waste.

[Just_a_fan]

However, last year's car appeared to suffer from a very stiff set up which one could say was due to an underperforming floor/diffuser design. We also know that they didn't resolve it over the whole of the season, so that would infer it was a pretty fundamental part of the design that couldn't be changed easily.

McLaren have stated that the problem was that the underside of the car was very ride height sensitive - it worked well but efficiency dropped away markedly above a certain ride height. Thus the suspension couldn't be allowed to let the ride height increase hence the stiff set up. The thing worked well but was sensitive. They say that the new car will be more supple again because the smaller diffuser is less sensitive to ride height. This alone will help close the gap with RB and Ferrari who both rode well last year.

[horse]

So you guys would rather have McLaren be innovative, wasteful, and lose, than to use a tried and true design and win the championship?

The thing is, that I'm not sure McLaren have yet found a development "mantra" that is capable of beating the Red Bull/Ferrari. Hence, they have to make dramatic changes to try and cook up a formula that is better. It must have been clear to the designers that an iteration on the 2009 or 2010 car would not have been good enough to make up the time deficit, so something new and innovative was not simply a choice, but a requirement.

On the flip side of this coin is the Mercedes which looks very much like an iteration of it's predecessor. Therefore, we must assume that the designers believed this approach would provide a large enough jump in lap time (relative to the new rules) to overhaul the gap to Red Bull/Ferrari/McLaren. To assume otherwise is to assume they don't wish to win.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

At least the sidepod arrangement is an innovation that will not be a FIA/FOTA enforced dead end for them. Think about it, they had the best KERS in 2009 - Banned. Then the best F-duct in 2010 - Banned. These crazy sidepods at least have genuine development potential, which is something McLaren struggled to produce with last years gizmos. It will be interesting to see if they still maintain a KERS advantage, also.

I think the issue of KERS being banned was a team agreement, not FIA enforced. It was too expensive for lesser teams. Costs have come down now, therefore its back.
MercedesHPE/Zytek KERS units will probably be the best units again but there wont be much in it.

As for the F-duct, it was a clever innovation but I think there were some dangers of drivers driving one handed at 200mph. I could see the ban coming.

[marcush.]

Mclaren are not just into copy the Newey stuff as quickly as possible.I doubt that RB7 is anything close to maximum of what is possible under the current rules.
As we see now a considerable number of teams coming up with very differnt concepts it seems they have found things or attractive avenues on their own.

[Richard]

I want every car to have strong competition. Seeing which of the new teams gets the first points is as exciting as the WCC. I also want to see innovation and variability, because that leads to the potential for the tables being turned.

We have several dramatic innovations this year - Williams, McLaren, Torro Rosso, Renault. They are trying to gain on the Ferrari and RB who are going for a more traditional evolution.

Hopefully one or two of the innovators will have success. The odds are against all of them succeeding, but fortune favours the brave, who dares wins and all that. So which is the duck and which is an eagle? Or will it be a case of the steady tortoise and innovative hare?

All I can say is that I'm eagerly watching them all!

... I wonder if this line of conversation about testing and innovation should be split into a new thread called "Testing innovations"? Starting with Segs post on the last page that starts "Funnily enough this"

[okibcn]

Speaking of late for testing, wasn't it Red Bull who missed the first two tests last year, as Newey had to complete his aero simulations? They paid dearly in practical testing and reliability and made the season closer than it should have been.

Last year, RB invested all of their effort in the aero package in a single direction, it was risky, they ended late but after solving the reliability problems during the season they got both titles at the very end. This year McLaren and RB are not doing so, they do not have a clear direction and there is not too much test time for so many "experiments".

IMHO now it's time to test tyres and fine tunning the selected technology. On the other hand, being selfish, I really enjoy the technical show this year from McLaren and RB. At the end these are just words, Barhein is going to be the real show and there we will have the answers to many questions.

Regards

Oki

[Just_a_fan]

McLaren's car last year was a specific design for a specific, but short term, set of rules. The DDD was allowed and they came up with a system that was subsequently banned.

They had to come up with a new design for this year and one that isn't a copy of another car e.g. the RB.

If the new car is fast then they have a concept that can be developed in to next year too - I wonder if the RB7 is as developed as the RB concept can be; I wonder how much tighter the sidepods can be made for example.

I also wonder where the next development will be - I think 'clever' suspension is the next big thing as it can maximise the potential of the aero package in ground effect.

[segedunum]

Rumours swirled around that Jerez test that the car is very sensitive to changes in wind direction with some of the heavy winds there, and hence probably air direction in yaw as well. Why am I not surprised? If that's the case then they've got their work cut out and have more to worry about than exhausts.