Mclaren Mercedes 2014

[akshat21]

Jenson now blames Magnussen for the poor development. According to Sky Sports article, he is saying that the inexperience of Kevin is hurting the team. I really am surprised by his comments. A lead driver, who has been in F1 for more than a decade, should have the merit and ability to lead development of a car and give enough feedback so the engineers can decipher the right path.

I know its a totally different scenario with Hamilton having more practice miles on him before joining McL, but Alonso still managed to get the car developed the way he liked it, atleast in the early part of the testing and season.

Link to article : http://www1.skysports.com/f1/report/124 ... -magnussen

[monsi]

Presumably Button's comment was said in the context of Hamilton and Rosberg going at it hammer and tongs, with the Mercedes team commenting about the competitiveness improving things for them in car development. There clearly is not the same situation at McLaren, as Magnussen is still working his way into the role. While I agree that Button might have been wiser not to make the comment, he does qualify the scale of the missing competition as a tenth or two. If a tenth or two was all that was lacking on this car then I doubt anyone would be unhappy. The issues are clearly with the car design and implementation, if we take Button at his word, and I see no real reason not to.

[FoxHound]

He is not blaming Magnussesn.

It's a fact Magnussen will need to learn how to develop a set up. When Button started out it was the same for him, and so on and so forth.

[Kiril Varbanov]

Button wants to stay - AUTOSPORT - http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/113930

[Richard]

Jenson now blames Magnussen for the poor development. According to Sky Sports article, he is saying that the inexperience of Kevin is hurting the team.....

No he didn't. The word "blame" doesn't appear in the article.

He was asked what it was like having a rookie driver helping to develop the car. Button said that Magnusson is in his first year in F1 so he's still learning, he gives feedback on how the car is handling, but he doesn't have enough experience to know how changes to set up might change the car.

He was then asked if it was different when Hamilton was at McLaren, and the reply was that two experienced drivers can give more feedback and try different set ups.

Next week Sky Sports headline will be the shocker to end all shocks - "Button claims bears poop in the woods". What would we do without their measured insights eh?

[Holm86]

Jenson now blames Magnussen for the poor development. According to Sky Sports article, he is saying that the inexperience of Kevin is hurting the team.....

No he didn't. The word "blame" doesn't appear in the article.

He was asked what it was like having a rookie driver helping to develop the car. Button said that Magnusson is in his first year in F1 so he's still learning, he gives feedback on how the car is handling, but he doesn't have enough experience to know how changes to set up might change the car.

He was then asked if it was different when Hamilton was at McLaren, and the reply was that two experienced drivers can give more feedback and try different set ups.

Next week Sky Sports headline will be the shocker to end all shocks - "Button claims bears poop in the woods". What would we do without their measured insights eh?

Poor McLaren. They have a rookie and an experienced driver. None of them knows how to help develop the car.

[adrianjordan]

Jenson now blames Magnussen for the poor development. According to Sky Sports article, he is saying that the inexperience of Kevin is hurting the team.....

No he didn't. The word "blame" doesn't appear in the article.

He was asked what it was like having a rookie driver helping to develop the car. Button said that Magnusson is in his first year in F1 so he's still learning, he gives feedback on how the car is handling, but he doesn't have enough experience to know how changes to set up might change the car.

He was then asked if it was different when Hamilton was at McLaren, and the reply was that two experienced drivers can give more feedback and try different set ups.

Next week Sky Sports headline will be the shocker to end all shocks - "Button claims bears poop in the woods". What would we do without their measured insights eh?

Poor McLaren. They have a rookie and an experienced driver. None of them knows how to help develop the car.

I have to admit to thinking the same thing...and I'm a Button fan!!

[tkulla]

Drivers don't "develop the car" these days. They report what they are feeling from the car and that is now supported by data.

I suspect what Jenson is talking about is being able to learn from the data of his teammate, and right now he's probably not getting much from Kevin, who is usually slower than him, especially in the practice sessions. There's not a lot of point in looking at the traces of a driver who was a couple of tenths slower than you, is there? I think Button enjoyed driving with Lewis because he could see how Lewis found speed and he and his engineers could talk setup and see what part of that worked for him even though they had different driving styles. Kevin and Jenson seem to drive in a similar style, so there no "experiment" going on in the other garage that might be helpful. In other words, Kevin is probably benefitting from Jenson's data but it's not flowing the other way.

[mclaren_mircea]

Another bad luck for Mclaren. Rain in the only test day at Barcelona, without the ideal conditions to properly test new part. Tomorow Mclaren will do the scheduled Pirelli test and cannot put a single new part on the car, because it's only about the tyres. They won't learn to much from this test, with rain when testing new parts, and tomorow doing tyrest test for Pirelli. Maybe some data about the tyres, but I don't think it will help them much about the car.

[Richard]

Another bad luck for Mclaren.

All teams are in the same situation so it's not bad luck for one team.

Anyway, McLaren might be lucky that Williams or Torro Rosso haven't been able to properly test something that would make them faster than McLaren. Also McLaren might have discovered something that will give them an advantage in the next wet race .... or not.

[mclaren_mircea]

Another bad luck for Mclaren.

All teams are in the same situation so it's not bad luck for one team.

Anyway, McLaren might be lucky that Williams or Torro Rosso haven't been able to properly test something that would make them faster than McLaren. Also McLaren might have discovered something that will give them an advantage in the next wet race .... or not.

It would be better to test new parts in the dry, that was my idea. If today it would have been a sunny day it wouldn't have been so worse, because they could have tested properly the new parts, but I don't know how much real testing on new parts they did today Mercedes for example tested the tyres one day in Bahrain, and had another sunny day for new parts. Mclaren from bad luck to bad luck, if they would have been scheduled to test the tyres today and had the sunny day of tomorow for new parts would have been ideal. But it's Mclaren's proverbial bad luck even in these details

[nace84]

I don't think they had any new parts. If they had something i belive someone would notice them...from interviews I would assume they were just testing the setup.

[mclaren_mircea]

I may get downgrading votes, but I have to put the question that is hunting me for several weeks now. How is that possible? How Mclaren is in this situation? I'm almost crying and I'm totally broken... I can't exaplain on thing: what were they doing after they said they abandoned the 2013 car (on June 2013) will the others continued to update the cars until at autum???
Mclaren is the first of the big teams that last year publicly said that they will abandon all kind of effort on the 2013 car and that they will put all the effort, but all the effort on 2014. That was happening at the end of June 2013. In the same time Red Bull, Ferrari and Lotus developed at a higher rate the car until August-Setember 2013. Even after that, Mercedes and Ferrari continued to put new bites on the car from time to time, in their fight for the second place in the Constructors. Red Bull too put a great effort in updateing the car until the end of September. What was Mclaren doing in the same time? For so many months before the competition they said that they are full working only for 2014 car. Where are those months which they should have over the competition by switching everything for 2014? I know that all the big teams started to work on the 2014 projects in 2011-2012, but Mclaren is the first of the bigs that said: ALL AND EVERYTHING FOR 2014. What were they doing almost half a year of full resources for 2014 when the other were battling for positions in the 2013 Championship?
I can't think that they did nothing for 5 months with so many resources availeble. As a devoted Mclaren fan, this question is hunting me down. Where were the technical team when the others were diverting the efforts towards 2 projects? They have followed only one project, and the didn't create not a single advantage over the competition.
I'm thinking that if it is because the Mercedes were treating them strictly as an engine provider, knowing they will go with Honda, with no real support (in comparison Williams said that they were never so supported by an engine provider with so much details and feed back like Mercedes treated them in the autum of 2013), or that they started to focus resources towards the 2015 car since than? Is it possible that they said they are full gearing towards 2014 but they knew that Mercedes will not give them much information, and the started to work on 2015 car? If it's not the case, what were they doing in those months when everybody developed the 2013 cars?

[KingHamilton01]

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/113942 Must have part's coming soon in connection to this article

[mikeerfol]

Radical approach huh? Hopefully it will end better than the one they tried with Button last year in India.