Is McLaren really off the pace?

[marcush.]

with all due respect to Mclaren my own experience of design teams is not very fruitful if the head of the gang is not understanding himself as a host/moderator but is a strong personality and someone who really has a vision on how the finished product should look/behave.Maybe I did not have the pleasure to work in groups with above average people but it always tended to be something of a fight for the minimum in common and not the maximum that could be achieved...it was characterised by the etos everyone does his own work and does not care about the whole.I could be very wrong here ,but I feel a F1car design needs a strong single person to do the concept(maybe a team of two)but having that group approach is not leading to outstanding endproducts.
On the other hand Mclaren has now for some time produced differnt -not mainstream- cars so it seems they either have some VERY strong personalities in these groups getting their way -inspite of numbers not stacking up in reality- or they have absolutely no feeling for what is needed to produce the top car but the sheer ability and recources to extract the maximum out of the dog they concepted...

[PlatinumZealot]

My greatest fear is that mclaren sucks at restricted single diffusers. In all the years with the 150mm diffuser height we had low DF.

They should just shamelessly copy the redbull at this point. All the teams that look like the redbull are faster than us now.

you do realise that just copying wont do the trick right?

Give me millions of dollars of development money and some engineering geniuses and you can make a good bet that copying can bring results.

Seriously, I think it was on Scarbs website: there were silhouettes of the RBR7, R31 ad F150, and I could not tell which was which until after a few minutes of scrutinizing.

Some people may not realise what copying can do. One thing I learned when I did product design is that copying is a serious form of engineering. Don' take copying lightly. Ask the Chinese, no - ask Mclaren in 2007.

[myurr]

Simple copying is never the answer in a constantly changing sport where all the major players are bringing innovations and refinement to every race. Copying Red Bull will only ever get you one step behind Red Bull, and that isn't good enough for McLaren. Only through innovation and trying to come up with a different and better concept will get them the best car on the grid.

Manufacturing is wildly different with a vast variety of players all innovating at different rates, with radically different budgets, and often with the innovators then sitting on their laurels rather than coming up with the next new design. There copying, refinement, and a better marketing campaign can turn you into a winner.

[PlatinumZealot]

You copy and you add your innovation. Then Compare what you had before and you combine the strengths of your design with the other guy's. That is a sound engineering process.

That brings me to a thought. How probable is it for the engineers at mclaren to have tried a FULLY detailed imitation of the RB6 in CFD and windtunnel?

[bettonracing]

Reiterating Myurr's words in another form:

"Copying only makes You as good as the other team was when You copied them - assuming You copy all the things that made it work."

A more appropriate term may be 'studying the competition'. Copying implies duplicating parts & blindly putting them on to see if they work. Studying implies understanding the principles that make it (i.e. the competition's product) work, and adapting them to Your product where appropriate.

I think Nsmikle is thinking of the latter, but using the term of the former.

Regards,

Kurt

[segedunum]

You copy what obviously works (lap time never lies), compare it to your car and then try and work out what is good on yours and keep that.

I still take major issue with those sidepods and I stand by my assessment that it's introducing a huge number of variables that are ripe for instability. They're introducing boundary layers and testing the airflow interactions there, and they will be very complex, will be something they will only have done when they turned up for testing. Simulating that through CFD and even in a windtunnel, with variables like front tyre steering angle, is pretty much impossible. It's a massive risk, I am not surprised the car is allegedly looking unstable through corners and I very much doubt the airflow they bring to the rear of the car will be worth the pain of getting it stable and working.

If you've seen The Flying Lap, episode 9, posted on a thread around here they go into wind tunnels and yaw. OK, it's got Peter Windsor in it but it is quite interesting. Willem Toet doesn't say a great deal about McLaren other than "You'd go a long way before you criticised McLaren's aero".

McLaren just strikes me as a team over the past few years who hasn't thought through their cars properly and then simply threw flo viz and monitoring instruments at the problem. Against Red Bull and Ferrari that will never be good enough.

[PlatinumZealot]

The sidepods are good IMO. my problem is everything else.

the nose - not agressive
the snow plough - not enough side sweep
the front splitter - too basic
the exhaust - I just don't like it!
the cooling hole at the back - too small and choked up
the waist of the car - not smooth as redbull
the beam wing - melded into the crash structure not floating
the rear wing - the upper element looks huge vs rivals

[myurr]

McLaren just strikes me as a team over the past few years who hasn't thought through their cars properly and then simply threw flo viz and monitoring instruments at the problem. Against Red Bull and Ferrari that will never be good enough.

2007 - best car.
2008 - second best car to Ferrari, but very close.
2009 - both McLaren and Ferrari off the pace as they threw resources at 2008 hampering their start to the year. Turned it into a race winner.
2010 - joint second best car with Ferrari with each being stronger at different times of the year.

I'd hardly say they've been failing to think things through and failing completely - they've been there or there abouts against some very stiff competition, and Red Bull have benefitted from having the best car in a period of relative aero rules stability.

[marcush.]

errm ..lets put up the numbers..how many people maybe working on Mclarens aero since when? how many first class windtunnels did they use? how far is their CFD work capability developed?
Can we judge their realhands on work by LOOKING at the finished product and quantify it´s benefits over the admittedly differnt looking opposition?
Looking back one year ,Mclaren obviously had a differnt concept to the other cars yet kept in the title hunt right till the end even though they struggled badly with their development adapting the must have gadgets to the car ,which was less triggered by the basic concept but more owed to a failure to build parts that could withstand the heat input.

[raymondu999]

to be fair McLaren's strength was never in aero IMO. They were always mechanical kings. Only last year they destroyed their own strong point by using overly stiff springs on the -25

[marcush.]

to be within a shout of winning the championship you cannot afford to be NOT top notch in any area be it technical ,organisational financialor strategical methinks.

[Alge7a]

McLaren just strikes me as a team over the past few years who hasn't thought through their cars properly and then simply threw flo viz and monitoring instruments at the problem. Against Red Bull and Ferrari that will never be good enough.

2007 - best car.
2008 - second best car to Ferrari, but very close.
2009 - both McLaren and Ferrari off the pace as they threw resources at 2008 hampering their start to the year. Turned it into a race winner.
2010 - joint second best car with Ferrari with each being stronger at different times of the year.

I'd hardly say they've been failing to think things through and failing completely - they've been there or there abouts against some very stiff competition, and Red Bull have benefitted from having the best car in a period of relative aero rules stability.[/

I guess it depends what way you spin it. I would have said .
2008 second to Ferrari
2009 a dog most the season
2010 second to RB
2011 not looking good so far
From a team that has endless resources and decades more experience than RB at least. What ever way you sum this up there are fundamental problems at Mc and since the new tougher regulations came in they got caught with there pants down. The lack of wind tunnel testing has exposed there weaknesses and they seem to be slower at playing catch up than Ferrari. The fans frustration obviously lies in the fact they have a truly great driver at a point where the car is not up to scratch.

[PlatinumZealot]

Ferrari was better than us in 2010 on average.

Better on the tyres
Better aero
Better mechanical
More reliable

[feynman]

...From a team that has endless resources ....

Is that true?

My vague understanding was that McLaren operate with a very high-end of midrange budget (or bottom end of toprange). About half of Ferrari, and a bit less than Mercedes spend (in both cases, clearly distorted by engine manufacture, I'll accept that).

McLaren and Red Bull expenditure are supposed to be about the same, in the 130million quid ballpark ... although precisely how the Red Bull Technology numbers figure into that, and given how hard Horner is currently sweating and squeezing the books to fit under the Resource Restriction Agreement for last year, and counting extra costs that are shared with Toro Rosso and charged-back by way of "services rendered" thru Red Bull Technology .... If I had to guess, and it would be a pure guess, I'd say Red Bull currently expends fractionally slightly more resource than a team like McLaren.

Don't suppose anyone has seen the books, nah didn't think so?

[segedunum]

2007 - best car.
2008 - second best car to Ferrari, but very close.

In those two years there had been a stable set of regulations for some time and they were basically carrying on Adrian Newey's aerodynamic thinking and lineage. You just had to look at things like the characteristic anteater nose they still had.

Beyond that and into the new set of regulations this crew don't have the greatest of track records. For successful teams that have won races you can see the lineage - the RB5 has evolved seamlessly into the RB7. You can even see it with Ferrari's unsuccessful 2009 car, through 2010 and for this season. McLaren have lurched in at least three different directions since the new regulations came in.

We're not talking about a slide like Williams's because they're still able to win races, but you can certainly see a decline in their ability to do what it takes to win championships. Even then, their track record since they last won the constructors' in 1998 hasn't exactly been stellar to the point where you've got to ask what else is wrong.