MP4-27 Japan updates(Italian)
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Team: Tim Goss (Director of Engineering), Paddy Lowe (TD), Neil Oatley (DRD), Martin Whitmarsh (TP), Jonathan Neale (MD), Sam Michael (SD)
Drivers: Jenson Button (3), Lewis Hamilton (4)
Team name: Vodafone McLaren Mercedes
McLaren’s MP4-27 is a good racecar. That much is obvious. By the end of the European racing season it had won more Grands Prix than any other car, yet the unpredictable nature of the 2012 season meant that it headed into the championship showdown not topping either of the World Championships. The car has been consistently competitive throughout the year, although according to Paddy Lowe, McLaren’s technical director, ‘it doesn’t always feel like we have been at the front. It has been quite a tough year just trying to get that consistency, but everyone has struggled in the same way. You tend to focus on the challenges you have faced yourself, rather than how others have fared. We have learned a lot along the road, but it is all driven by trying to keep the tyres in the right window.’Indeed the characteristics of the revised Pirelli tyres are something that surprised many teams in the paddock, including McLaren. When the MP4-27 was launched, much of the focus was on recapturing some of the downforce lost due to rule changes related to exhaust position and usage. ‘Every year, we sit down and want to design a race-winning car,’ says McLaren’s director of engineering, Tim Goss. ‘We didn’t have the quickest car at the start of last season, but we did everything possible to build the quickest car possible this season. We set ourselves very tough and ambitious targets and the car was a complete re-work from nose to tail. Everything on the car was changed.‘I think there’s very little that we’ve carried over. There’s a few pieces of the fuel system, but otherwise I think just about everything on the car has changed. We’ve worked extremely hard at producing a very integrated aerodynamic and design package. Our main objectives for the 2012 season were to optimise downforce. despite the changes to the blown floor, and to improve our understanding and utilisation of the Pirelli tyres, which were new to us last year.’ While almost the entire car was new, the concept was still evolutionary as the 2012 car carried over components from its predecessor, the MP4-26, including the in-house carbon fibre gearbox (built by McLaren and supplied to Force India), the 2.4-litre Mercedes-Benz HPE engine, and many of the smaller components. McLaren’s 2011 car, the MP4-26, was also a race winner and had some very distinctive design features including a sidepod shape. For the 2012 season, this concept was dropped, but not because it did not work.‘Last year’s U-shaped sidepod worked very well indeed with what we were trying to achieve with the exhaust layout,’ explains Goss. ‘It was all intended to create more down wash to the rear end, and it performed particularly well. This year, at a fairly early stage, we set about a different approach to both the external and the internal aerodynamics of the car. Once the exhaust regulations had started to become clearer, it was quite obvious to us that the U-shaped sidepod no longer fitted in with both the internal aerodynamics and some of the external aerodynamics that we pursued early on. So it works, it worked very well last year, but it’s actually just not suited to what we’re trying to achieve this year.’
Indeed the whole U-shaped sidepod was defined by the blown diffuser concept, something that was not widely reported at the time. It was all about channelling the air flow, and in turn the exhaust plume, down into the space between the inner edge of the rear tyre and the outer edge of the diffuser. But the FIA outlawed the low exhaust exits used on the 2011 cars and the engine maps crucial to the off-throttle blowing. ‘The regulations around the exhausts became very prescriptive: the exhausts must now exit within a very tight space at the rear of the car in order to minimise their aerodynamic influence,’ Goss explains. ‘The final 100mm of the exhausts must be cylindrical – so they can no longer be oval, or flattened – and must be sited at a particular vertical and horizontal angle – between 10 and 30 degrees upwards. That’s to direct the exhaust exit away from the floor. They have the inevitable impact on the flow-fields around the rear of the car, yes. In previous years, the exhausts exited directly into the rear corner of the floor. We can’t do that anymore so, as you’d expect, that changes the flow characteristics at the rear of the car. The knock-on effect is that all of the aerodynamic devices at the rear of the car have had to be re-designed.’ The MP4-27 features fairly conventional rectangular sidepods, at least when viewed from the front. ‘The rule changes put the exhaust position right in the middle of the U-channel,’ explains Lowe. ‘Having to have the exhausts in the middle of that channel destroyed that approach, so this years sidepods are a lot more conventional.’The rules also meant that McLaren had to come up with an entirely new exhaust concept.
Whilst the rule changes saw off one approach to the blown diffuser, the concept itself was not outlawed. ‘Blown diffusers in themselves have never been defined, and therefore were also never banned,’ stresses Lowe.‘That’s an important point to make. What we were doing last year was exploiting the exhaust to deliver a huge amount of aerodynamic performance and for this year, that performance has been severely reduced by changing the rules around exhaust exits and engine mapping. ‘Are people still generating performance from the floor, including some elements of exhaust-generated downforce? The answer is yes. We are doing that and I think most of the teams are to a greater or lesser extent. It’s a direction where you can find some performance, but It’s not anything like as extreme as it was in 2011. ‘Whether it is in the spirit of the rules or not is unimportant. There’s no such thing as the spirit of the rules. It’s a term often used, but the rule book is text that has a meaning, and you decide what that meaning is and you work to it. There’s no headline regulation that says ‘above all else, you’ve got to remain within the spirit of what was intended’. I’d like to think that we were the pioneers of this blown-floor concept. We were first, along with Sauber this year, to come out with exhaust designs to do that, and most of the teams on the grid now have it.’The MP4-27’s exhausts exit the bodywork via a bulge in the rear portion of the sidepod. A small channel behind the exit itself, and the overall shape of the sidepods themselves, channel the flow to that crucial area at the rear of the car’s floor.
In fact, the main focus of the car’s aerodynamic design since it was launched at the start of the season has been about the
four corners, and in particular the tyres. Pirelli revised its compounds for the start of the 2012 season and the result has been some of the best racing in Formula 1 for a long time.‘I think the effort to get on top of the tyres has increased during the season, as they have proven far more critical than expected,’ admits Lowe. ‘I doubt Pirelli predicted how critical the tyres would be this year. The changes to the tyres over the winter seemed to be reasonably small, but the impact has been dramatic. Indeed I’m not sure Pirelli understand it themselves.‘A great example of the races being dominated by tyre conditions, and in particular tyre temperatures, was Malaysia. Jenson [Button], came out into clear air on a new set of tyres from near the back and had some extraordinary pace, as his tyres were in the correct temperature window. ‘As soon as he came up on some traffic, and didn’t get past immediately, you lose that temperature and you spiral into much lower performance – to the extent that the drivers you catch up can start to leave you behind again.
’Aerodynamic elements have been developed or redeveloped to improve how the car works its rubber, notably the brake ducts , as Lowe explains. ‘You may call them brake ducts, but in reality they are air ducts as you no longer need them to just cool the brakes.‘It was something F1 went away from in the regulations as it was too difficult to police, so we use those devices to generate aerodynamic downforce, as well as cooling the brakes and calliper, and a big thing is controlling the rear tyre temperature. We are certainly measuring a lot more and putting a lot of work into that corner, especially looking at the air ducts. Whilst we develop all of the car all of the time, we have put extra effort into the air ducts and the area around it.’ This optimisation goes to a great level of detail, even to the drillings on the brake discs themselves – something McLaren has worked on extensively in 2012 with the designs frequently changing.
‘It can be simply down to driver preference which brake they want, but its all part of this optimisation of the corner cooling packaging,’ explains Lowe. ‘We have different styles of disc drillings which impact the cooling, but also the behaviour of the brake, and drivers have different preferences for brake fluid and brake feel. One disc may be more controllable and the other more aggressive in initial attack, but with a different consistency. ‘With different types of material and geometry of cooling holes you can get different characteristics.
In-race brake coolIng adjustment by Craig Scarborough - See images and explanation on his blog McLaren: Adjustable Rear Brake Ducts
The nose
Of course the most distinctive thing about the McLaren MP4-27 is the look of the car. It is one of only two on the grid that does not feature a ‘hump’ in the nose. This is because for some years McLaren has used a comparatively low nose on its cars and continued this concept into 2012.The rules on nose height and chassis height led to the stepped noses of rival cars, which overall have a higher chassis. Whilst the difference is obvious to they eye, it does not seem to have much impact on the time sheet.‘We don’t regret doing the low nose,’ explains Lowe, ‘but we are an outlier in this respect. It is one of these things that looks very dramatic, but it’s just one thing of thousands on the car – there others that are not as obvious with a much higher influence than the nose. The chassis and nose height are something you decide on very early, as they are fundamental to the rest of the design. ‘We are not unhappy at the route we took. Is it the best? I don’t know. It is the route we have gone, so it’s like asking is my front wing the best? I don’t know if it makes as much downforce as the Ferrari front wing, but it’s the wing we have. The nose gets a level of attention it does not deserve because everyone can see it, but it’s just not a big deal.’
McLaren is broadly upbeat about the season to date, with the car on balance the best all-rounder this year. ‘The thing we are most proud of on this car is the exhaust design,’ concludes Lowe. ‘We put a lot of effort into that. It’s always nice to see the other teams, with all of their engineers working on the same problem, come back and conclude that your concept is the best and copy it. That’s a great compliment. ‘But the opposite applies if here is something on another car that you have to pick up and the other team gets there first. It’s not good and there have been a few of those too, but nothing substantial. ‘In general, though, I am really proud of this car,’ concludes Lowe. ‘It’s done well, came out of the box and got two front rows in the first two races.’
It's new with the vane – the front of the side pod used to be angled up like a bird's wings, like it is further back on the bulge.FrukostScones wrote:picture from Korea. Interesting, without the vane you can see a bulge on the sidepod. Is it old or new?
Yes indet, just have to wait for more detailet pic....beelsebob wrote:Just looking at that photo... the vanes on the side of the rear wing don't seem to go all the way back to the wing like they used to... Could this be McLaren's DDRS?
It´s the sidepod they are talking about, notice the little bulge on the edge of the sidepod.Shrieker wrote:Do any of you guys think McLaren will bring a DDRS solution before the season is out ?
@Bob,
Frankly I can't see any difference from the rear wing in Suzuka. Maybe it's just me...
They BETTER!Shrieker wrote:Do any of you guys think McLaren will bring a DDRS solution before the season is out ?
@Bob,
Frankly I can't see any difference from the rear wing in Suzuka. Maybe it's just me...
agree. Due to Fia tests?Dragonfly wrote:The lower ends of the pylons (attachment points?) look different between the two noses.
