McLaren MP4-26 Mercedes

[Just_a_fan]

What I've been interested to see is how much McLaren have been running with the cooling outlets reduced. The 'airbox rear exhaust' for example is tiny in most images where the others have been running full size cooling ducts all the time. If McLaren can run small cooling outlets now, does that mean they might be looking at bringing tighter rear bodywork in future?

The ability to block off most of the cooling outlets and still do representative runs might also imply an inherent reliability advantage in the hot races of the calendar.

I shall be interested to see what, if anything, happens in this area...

[Just_a_fan]

All this exhaust switching got me thinking.

Wouldnt it be possible(and legal) to have 2 cars ready, one fitted with the regular and the other with the ADEE, by this they dont have the switching times. For example new parts could then be fitted, by this they dont have loss of track time.

Assuming they have two complete cars worth of bits available of course. They've been struggling with bits for one car so two might be a touch tricky...

[myurr]

They're only allowed one car at the test are they not?

[Saribro]

No more than one car out on track, AFAIK.

[HampusA]

That's not true at all. All cars have an optimum operating range. Some cars are fast in a range of conditions, others are ultimately faster but more on a knife edge so that when outside their optimum temperature (for example) their performance is much worse.

A recent example was last years Red Bull that was the class of the field for most of the season, but when the temperatures got too high there was a window where other cars were still okay but the Red Bull overworked the tyres and suffered. In 2007 this was true of the McLaren and Ferrari where the latter was ultimately the faster car when everything was perfect but the McLaren coped better when things weren't quite right for the car. We've also seen years where McLaren were quick to get temperature into the tyres but Ferrari struggled. This lead to McLaren having a qualifying advantage with the Ferrari being the better race car, and the Ferrari being the faster car in really hot weather.

Pirelli are making a lot of noises about the tyres being much better in hotter weather. At the same time if teams that are able to work the tyres well in this cold weather continue to work the tyres as hard in the hot weather then they could well overheat the tyres. McLaren, in contrast, if they're too gentle on the tyres now and aren't getting enough heat into them could come into their own when the temperatures are higher.

Whether that is or is not the case we'll need to wait and see, but it's definitely a possibility.

I see now that i should have re-frased(?) my words.

Of course cars have their speciality like Red Bull for instance which had phenomenal raw speed but equal race pace to Ferrari.

What i ment was that if you have a good car that uses the tyres good you will not have one area where the car suck basically. Sure some other might be faster in that particular area but it´s not like your a backmarker in the not so good conditions.

That´s what i ment by either you have a good car or you don´t. To get the car to work flawlessy over all conditions extremely rare because nothing is perfect.

[Pup]

Well, whether they have a problem or not, they certainly seem calm about it; whereas in '09 they seemed to be in a general state of panic, running illegal wings, glueing random bits of carbon to the body, and slathering everything but the pit crew in flovis.

My take - if we don't see them run a private test between now and two weeks, then we can be fairly certain that they feel they've got a handle on it.

[NormalChris]

What I've been interested to see is how much McLaren have been running with the cooling outlets reduced. The 'airbox rear exhaust' for example is tiny in most images where the others have been running full size cooling ducts all the time. If McLaren can run small cooling outlets now, does that mean they might be looking at bringing tighter rear bodywork in future?

What I think is that the ambient temperature has been much lower than what they will be seeing for most the rest of the season. Everything has an optimum temperature so by changing inlet size and other orifices they can adjust the temps closer to what is wanted.
They've also been good with cooling recently if you remember the asymmetric sidepods.

[Just_a_fan]

@NormalChris

Indeed everything has an optimum temperature, but why are McLaren apparently the only ones playing with this aspect? Perhaps some others don't have the flexibility in their designs or perhaps there is some other reason. Perhaps McLaren have been restricting the cooling to try to simulate more arduous conditions. If so, and they can see that it works well, then they are in a better place than some others who have yet to figure out what the car will be like in hotter conditions.

As I said, it will be interesting to see how/if this changes.

[myurr]

That's not true at all. All cars have an optimum operating range. Some cars are fast in a range of conditions, others are ultimately faster but more on a knife edge so that when outside their optimum temperature (for example) their performance is much worse.

A recent example was last years Red Bull that was the class of the field for most of the season, but when the temperatures got too high there was a window where other cars were still okay but the Red Bull overworked the tyres and suffered. In 2007 this was true of the McLaren and Ferrari where the latter was ultimately the faster car when everything was perfect but the McLaren coped better when things weren't quite right for the car. We've also seen years where McLaren were quick to get temperature into the tyres but Ferrari struggled. This lead to McLaren having a qualifying advantage with the Ferrari being the better race car, and the Ferrari being the faster car in really hot weather.

Pirelli are making a lot of noises about the tyres being much better in hotter weather. At the same time if teams that are able to work the tyres well in this cold weather continue to work the tyres as hard in the hot weather then they could well overheat the tyres. McLaren, in contrast, if they're too gentle on the tyres now and aren't getting enough heat into them could come into their own when the temperatures are higher.

Whether that is or is not the case we'll need to wait and see, but it's definitely a possibility.

I see now that i should have re-frased(?) my words.

Of course cars have their speciality like Red Bull for instance which had phenomenal raw speed but equal race pace to Ferrari.

What i ment was that if you have a good car that uses the tyres good you will not have one area where the car suck basically. Sure some other might be faster in that particular area but it´s not like your a backmarker in the not so good conditions.

That´s what i ment by either you have a good car or you don´t. To get the car to work flawlessy over all conditions extremely rare because nothing is perfect.

Okay, but with tyres that drop off by a second or so on lap two if you have a car that takes two laps to get the tyres up to temperature in these cold conditions, then you will appear to be a second off the ultimate pace even if in hotter weather you'll be right up at the sharp end. I don't know if that's the case or not, none of us do, but certainly on the long runs McLaren have at times shown similar pace to the Ferrari and Red Bull so they must be doing something right. Usual caveats about compounds, fuel weights, etc. apply.

[CHT]

If you look at my prevois post, I was quoting Jonathan Neale, and he said it was important, and even he explains it in a quite understable way, why he thinks so. I just recommend you to trust him. You don't have to argue with me over this. In fact you were seriously questoned him, and not me ( or my idea ). I think neither of us could argue with him about this, so for me, my only option is to trust him.

I do rank Mclaren as the no.1 team for public relationship, with the exception of Lewis who occasionally "crack" under difficult circumstances.

You will need to have alot of faith to be trusting what these F1 guys are saying.

[speedsense]

IMHO, The rear most "round" bar is the toe link on the Peugeot.
And in the same Long plane as the arm.
Think about the two Mclaren lengths, adjust one longer, the other one would resist the lengthening of it as there isn't a pivot point between the two. You would have to change both lengths to change toe.
As far as why it's that way (double arms)...can't say, never seen anything like it...

agree with the first assessment
not quite sure if I understand the "Long plane" discription of yours - appologize,
as to me it(the Peugeot toe-link) is not in the same longitunal plane on the upright)

even if the two links are parallel in this photo/perspective (in others they are not allways), I would not imply that they join the upright in the same "plane".

see in this perspective, the two links are not parallel, indicating to me, that the lower one is running forward and therefore optical closing the gap in this perspective.



to me (but I could be wrong) the lower wishbone is facing/heading forward (towards the upright) to join underneath the driveshaft while the "toe-link" joins behind the driveshaft.
very similar to the Peugeot position or older Renault F1 rear suspension layouts.
Therefore, I can´t see the problem with lengthing only the toe-link to get a change in toe.

A trulely parallel second link (double arm) (joining at the same plane onto the upright and chassis) would over constrain the suspension - IMHO (similar to a driveshaft without float), so how this should work !?!

Sorry at least to me, that does not look like anything special or out of the ordinary.
They run the "toe-link" parallel to the lower wisbone, while ohers run it parallel (or in plane - Williams Z-wisbone) to the upper.

I did not find a very good shot where the wisbones joint the upright so I guess we have to wait for a while, but to me this looks like what I try to explain above.



hi res photo can be found here

in principle this (at least to me) looks similar to this or this
note (in the first photo) that lower wisbone and "toe-link" look parallel in this photo as well, but dont joint the upright in the same plane.

Let´s wait and see, sooner or later there will be some more detailed photos from the upright or rear suspension.

Ah, makes sense now, the previous picture made the appearance of parallel links, clearly they are not from this angle. Yep, toe link...
and yes I was commenting on the longitunal plane, which I should have said on "a" longitunal plane though not a parallel to the ground one, works as a toe link either way... though now I question, why have an extra arm in the air stream when all their body work is trying to get as much flow to the rear as possible?

[HampusA]

Okay, but with tyres that drop off by a second or so on lap two if you have a car that takes two laps to get the tyres up to temperature in these cold conditions, then you will appear to be a second off the ultimate pace even if in hotter weather you'll be right up at the sharp end. I don't know if that's the case or not, none of us do, but certainly on the long runs McLaren have at times shown similar pace to the Ferrari and Red Bull so they must be doing something right. Usual caveats about compounds, fuel weights, etc. apply.

Yea it seems they are starting to put things together now. I will not suprised if they come out with guns blazin in Australia

All i know is i can´t wait for this friggin season to kick off!

This could be one of the best seasons for a long time even though i think 07,08,10 was the best years in a LONG time.

[ringo]

Ringo, I dont't remember laughing out on any of your idea, so let me think that the low nose have ( at least something ) to do with those sidepods. I didn't say ( if I remember correctly ) that I'm absolutely right. I would never say something like that on this forum. I admit that I have no source for my idea. If you have for yours, I would like to see it. No offense.

I am not laughing at your idea, but because you used the words "stupid not to chose a low nose" IIRC. Those words sounded like a forgone conclusion that the low nose affects the side pods. I don't have any valid source to justify my opinion either.
The question is does the height of the nose affect any side pod design?

About Mclaren having an RB6 like car; I don't mind. It's long over due. Mclaren supporters haven't had a dominant car in donkey years.
We need a boring dominant season.

[kalinka]

OK, Ringo, that's fair play, thanks.
I have only one feelin' about this "lower" nose, and that's nothing more that they're the only team that choose to run a bit lower nose, and of course they are the only team that have those sidepods too. For me, it's at least a suspicious coincidence. Other thing that comes into my mind, is that in yaw condition, the high nose may block some of the airflow towards the opposite-side sidepod channel. It's true for other cars too, but they have no so to say "channel" on their sidepod's top.

I do rank Mclaren as the no.1 team for public relationship, with the exception of Lewis who occasionally "crack" under difficult circumstances. You will need to have alot of faith to be trusting what these F1 guys are saying.

That's true, but I think Neale is not that kind of "media" person in McLaren. Or if he is, then he could easy give some irrelevant "media" answer for it. But for me as for an engineer, his answer sounds totally logical and nice explained. You can use this kind of test methods in other areas too. I used to design electronic circuits, and if you redesign a circuit with a new idea and new components you usually take a same approach. If you change to a new, before unknown component, the best thing is to change only that one that is most important. If it works, and you tested it, you can change other components around it with much more confidence, and at the end of the process you end up with a circuit wich is totally redesigned. If you change everything at the same time, it almost never works, and you end up with countless hours of debugging. Sorry for long explanation, it;s just the way I see they approach to new car+new tyres.

[Richard]

The nose debate is simple.

Consider the frontal area of the car forcing its way through the air. Some air goes over the top, some under the floor, some round the sides, and a teeny bit into the cockpit to cool the driver though the hole in the tip.

The position of the nose, splitter, and tray directs the air in those directions. McL with low sidepods can allow more air over the top, hence a lower nose. RB favour air around the side passed the undercut sidepods, so that's why they've championed the very high nose in the last few years.

In the 80's the thinking was over or under, they hadn't figured the side route using splitters, trays, barge boards and undercut sidepods. Clearly you don't want air under because you want low pressure under the floor. So cars of that era had noses scrapping the floor to grab that air and force it over.