Being a Mclaren fan i can't believe we have a car that is inherently handicapped.
Hamilton said: "Do I believe I have a car to win the world championship at the moment? I don't. No.
"But that doesn't mean it won't become a world championship-winning car.
.........
... finding where your weaknesses are so you can build on them and fix them.
"We've been focusing on those, but we definitely have several issues that are not as easy to rectify as we had hoped."
Hamilton is right. And we're going into the season with a crippled car.
Though i think there is some hope. The issue is not the L shaped sidepods themselves. It's the price that the car pays to have it implemented.
There are 3 main things that were risked, that put them between a rock and a hard place in terms of dificult issues.
1. Fuel tank length.
2. Radiator shape and length
3. Cooling volume
The tank is too long. I think it was for aero reasons and the L shape cut why they narrowed it. A long tanks put the engine too far back in the car, which puts the manifolds too far back where you don't want them.
2. The radiators have to lie flatter with the L shape pods. This takes up too much floor space.
The shape having most of it at the bottom, means there is very little that can be place at the base of it without affecting the heat transfer.
3. The L shape restricts cooling volume and cooling flow paths. If you look carefully at the car you will notice that a a big cooling tunnel cannot pass from the wider areas of the side pods to the top of the engine like red bull.
Placing a big cooling tunnel would come in the way of the L trough. So Mclaren put this cooling path back more over the engine, much further back than most teams, in order to avoid crossing path and obstructing the L shape trough. You can see this path carved about the air filter on the engine.
This compromise relegates a good amount of the flow to the floor.
This is why the side pods are so volumous at the end. They have no choice but to put cooling flow there all becuase it can't go up and across without blocking the L trough.
The problems don't end there either.
The ehxuast manifold cannot be shaped high and narrow and pushed back similar to redbull or renault. It will come in the way of the L trough and also block cooling flow.
I think they want to copy the redbull and ferrari exhuasts, but the headers simply need to be back more and taller.
So this is another difficult problem.
The car is as fudged up as you can imagine. How do they fix all these problems?
They need to sacrifice engine power.
It sounds unrelated, but if Mclaren want to climb out of the problems they need to make some desperate moves.
1. Move the exhausts back. This can't be done with the radiators in the way. and it will block the cooling.
2. maintain respectable cooling flow
3. may have make the exhuast a little more entangled and compact.
in summary
4. A completely revolutionary radiator design, that will give the radiator fabricators hell. Maybe negtively affect how steady a flow reaches it's fins, and may incur pumping losses, but things can't get any worse.
It could be a small price to pay to break away from the issues. This could definitely get some well need space at the rear, and also allow them to use the cannon exhausts.
