McLaren MP4-26 Mercedes

[ajdavison2]

Mclaren back to the old spec rear wing? at least on Button's car it seems from watching the qualy build up

[ianwit]

Lewis ran the new wing but it looks like they are both now on the old wing with central pillar for practice

[ajdavison2]

Both Mclarens running older wing in qualy

[wesley123]

really these new rules are working well so in mid season, makes the Red Bulls get away with the title even easier. The only car that seems to be harmed is the McLaren

[Holm86]

How come every time McLaren has an update they need to take it off again. They just cant get their updates to work!!

[wesley123]

what makes you think that? sure they decide updates not to run sometimes, but so do other teams and their tweakrate seems to be much quicker then Red Bull for example. Where Red Bull seem to spend more time in getting it right, McLAren takes a new update with them every race, and that can or cannot work.

[Holm86]

Okay i just think they often has to take their updates off the car. It has happend many times with wings and diffusers.

Its not an advantage to bring updates to every race if they dont work.

[wesley123]

Okay i just think they often has to take their updates off the car. It has happend many times with wings and diffusers.

Its not an advantage to bring updates to every race if they dont work.

I can agree with that, but overall i think they have the same update rate compared to others, only a different approach.

McLAren now has built 3 new cars in the past 3 seasons, where Red Bull for example are running 3 years on the RB5's base. They are reaching the end of their development cycle way too soon, even if they could bring on the fight in the beginning they cannot last.

McLAren seriously need to revamp their car completely do they want to compete. There was a one and a half second gap in qualifying today!

[PlatinumZealot]

Back to preseason pace!

Looks like we were heavily dependent on Blowing the diffuser! (I knew the 2 second gain in AUS was strange!)

[ringo]

really these new rules are working well so in mid season, makes the Red Bulls get away with the title even easier. The only car that seems to be harmed is the McLaren

notice a coincidence?

Mclaren is back to their true pace.
The qualifying i a resflection of how poor a back end they have on the car.
This is the true testament to their chassis design which we have seen in wintertesting, 1.5s offf the pace.
The EBD was compensating for the innovative but highly compromising chassis design.
The flow to the rear and lower parts of the car is highly compromised with the L pods.
The EBD was the only thing pulling flow through it.

Now they have poor balance again and a very bouncy car.

So like a broken record, there is only one optimum design and that design is the redbll cars. If you want a chance to win, you copy yourself a redbull. There is no alternative, and it has been proven 2 years running now.
The unwavering thing about the car is the body, if the body is good reg changes wont affect it much, as we've seen with redbull.

[wesley123]

really these new rules are working well so in mid season, makes the Red Bulls get away with the title even easier. The only car that seems to be harmed is the McLaren

notice a coincidence?

Mclaren is back to their true pace.
The qualifying i a resflection of how poor a back end they have on the car.
This is the true testament to their chassis design which we have seen in wintertesting, 1.5s offf the pace.
The EBD was compensating for the innovative but highly compromising chassis design.
The flow to the rear and lower parts of the car is highly compromised with the L pods.
The EBD was the only thing pulling flow through it.

Now they have poor balance again and a very bouncy car.

So like a broken record, there is only one optimum design and that design is the redbll cars. If you want a chance to win, you copy yourself a redbull. There is no alternative, and it has been proven 2 years running now.
The unwavering thing about the car is the body, if the body is good reg changes wont affect it much, as we've seen with redbull.

Dont think their car is bad, they just have reached its performance limit and the EBD seems to be hurting them more then others.

[myurr]

Give it a rest Ringo. Did you not notice how Charlies last minute sop to Horner hurt McLaren disproportionately as they suddenly weren't allowed the engine overrun necessary on those cars to balance engine braking and KERS harvesting? Or how they had only 20 mins or so to make all the changes to their cars software and setup to accommodate that change, whereas all the other teams had been running in FP3 with the configuration they took into qualifying? Or that because of this Hamilton ended up ditching the new rear wing, presumably for a better known package with more down force, so he entered qualifying have never driven that aero setup before?

This whole weekend has been an utter farce, principally because Horner has thrown a juvenile strop trying to find an advantage for his team and Charlie has been trying to placate him. Only one engine manufacturer had to enter qualifying using different rules to those they were expecting to run this weekend - Mercedes. All the other teams were using the setups and configurations that they had intended to before they arrived at Silverstone, only the Mercedes teams were told they could run in a different configuration prior to the weekend.

We've also had so little running time that this weekend was never going to be a true indicator of relative performance. I said that before the weekend started and I stick to it now.

[kalinka]

+1 , And IIRC Hamilton only managed to do 1 fast lap on softs before the rain, and we saw in Q2 that they needed at least 2 laps to warm up those tyres, and then the times dropped dramatically, I have no time now to analyse, but I'd say it was about 1.5sec faster after that. I don't know why they can't warm up softs as quick as others though. So I think they are about 0.5-0.6 sec off the (true) pace ( as before ).

[ringo]

Dont think their car is bad, they just have reached its performance limit and the EBD seems to be hurting them more then others.

It's not bad, it's just not good enough and it wont be unless they make drastic changes to the radiators and exhaust pipe bundle.

1.5s gap is too much for mid way through the season.

[Paul]

Change of strategy between Q2 and Q3 was indeed strange. In Q2 Lewis was out on track until his option went off. In Q3 it was always the plan to do only one flying lap on the first run, despite the team anticipating more rain. Maybe they underestimated how much heat they would get into the tyres in one lap and hoped to be higher up the grid with very low fuel?