Mclaren MP4-30 Honda

[turbof1]

If any of you really thought that McLaren would come out on track and obliterate Mercedes and Ferrari, then you were living on your own islands and are underestimating the challenge that Formula One poses and the engineering quality present in the current engine suppliers and teams. McLaren Honda is progressing, and Alonso also mentioned earlier, and today again, that he knew there would be teething problems. Expecting anything else is just irrational.

Honda and McLaren are focused on their own job. To get the car working. Both Boullier and Arai have confirmed me in a meeting just minutes ago that they have chosen to design a car that can compete, so it's an aggresive engine package and a tightly packaged chassis. They were aware that this could pose problems, but they had designed initially with the homologation date in mind, so they pushed hard for performance (not that after homologation, they would have still been able to add upgrades for reliability).

The problems found now are different to those from Abu Dhabi, and are mainly electrical. They hope to fix them overnight, but are unsure whether that will uncover other problems.

Again, that's normal for a new power unit design. Ask all existing engine suppliers and they will confirm.

Going from the tweets and quotes from mclaren, they sounded pretty relaxed. As you said, an electrical issue. However, their primary concern was overheating, but nothing got overheated. Which is good.

They have to go through a large part of the issues and troubleshooting the other manufacturers had to plough through a year ago, so I also think this pretty normal and nothing too concerning at the moment.

I do believe they want the reliability issues sorted before the homologation date (february 28th I believe?), because if they want to introduce updates under reliability, they need to submit a technical and very explicit detailing of the changes to the FIA, which will share that very same report with the other manufacturers to make sure no hidden performance updates are present. No manufacturer is keen on sharing technical details of their power unit and rather avoid doing that.

[ArgyrisB]

Problems already fixed

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/117541

[FrukostScones]

what engine spec did they run today? the old one? (from Abu Dhabi)

[turbof1]

No livery talk in the car topic thread. I removed said posts. Livery discussion goes either into the team thread: http://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewto ... 15&t=21194, but preferable into the its very own livery thread: http://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewto ... =1&t=21323

[CjC]

Ron Dennis' assessment of the day, it's been posted before but this is more in depth

http://m.skysports.com/article/formula1//9694696

He talks about 'new technologies' on the whole but also about be technologies in the engine, this is fascinating me, what could he be referring to? Especially with the engine?

[Agerasia]

Doesn't sound rough to me, it does sound a little bit "big bang" though, probably cross plane with a big offset.
Maybe that's what Dennis was referring too?

[taperoo2k]

The correct question that could be asked is: why didn't Mclaren schedule a shakedown to make sure that the Abu Dhabi problems were ironed out? Those filming days are perfect to find and fix exactly this kind of issues.

Probably because they weren't ready with their new chassis in time, and they may have thought testing with the old car would not have been useful? Not sure though, but there must be some valid reason...

Given filming days are limited in terms of distance, it would have probably not been a good use of resources to use one as a shakedown test given the Honda Power Unit and electronics are complex systems. Plus I'm guessing they were still feverishly working on the MP4-30 up until the last possible moment in terms of design, crash tests and getting the car packed up and shipped to Jerez.

To expect miracles from McLaren Honda at this point is a bit misguided. 2015 is going to be one hard slog for all involved in the project.

[KingHamilton01]

I think where people are being unrealistic is that McLaren is that there is an expectation that they should be further down the line and doing more lap's. There are still in very early stages of development of the engine and along with the car being so aggressively packaged, this mean's exactly as mentioned that electronics are an issue at the moment and they need to pick through these issues.

Yes Mercedes did an impressive amount of lap's today and yes the other team's did more lap's than McLaren, but let's look at the bigger picture here, would you rather start with an aggressive package that is fragile that has a chance of making ground to Mercedes over the season as the car is made reliable. The other scenario is McLaren play it safe, go for something that doesn't really push aero or the engine package.

Mentioned by other's I understand that McLaren is taking a risk with there package, But with Mercedes dominating F1 last season, I think McLaren know that this aggressive approach is the only way they will gain any sort of worthwhile ground. They envisage new problem's even though they solved today's, so I think with this some people need to put there own expectation's of what they think McLaren should do and what realistically the team is going to achieve.

McLaren is a long term project and they aren't going to set the world a light this week with lap's covered and lap times, but who know's what they might do the following week? I for one am watching with intrigue and not taking any opportunity to say they should be doing better or oh no this is a bad start.

[horse]

Not that interesting after all...

[Unc1eM0nty]

I must say I like the attitude they're projecting of taking risks and pushing for absolute performance, like the F1 days of old where they were designed to get to the end of the race then fall apart, of course with only 4 engines for the season it's now a different ball game.

It sounded great apart from the misfiring, limp mode maybe ? could this have been a safety setting due to the electronic issues they were having.

Not worried about the lack of running, shake down first, reliability then performance, we wont see that from any team until the last test.

[aleks_ader]

It sounded great apart from the misfiring, limp mode maybe ? could this have been a safety setting due to the electronic issues they were having.

In my option misfiring could be the problem. I speculate that could be with electronic sensor "noise" problem hence there you had missfiring problems. That could be common "failure" of new engine designs. To "be" integrated part fitted tightly into tiny and even hostile places like F1 car it is never easy task.

And this sort of problems are almost complete undiscoverable and unknown until you run the car on the track. Those kind of electronic problems are very unpredictable because of to many variables involved for example; assembly, manufacturing, design itself, operating environment, code glitches etc.

[Vettel Maggot]

To all those people thinking it is the end of the world, remember Red Bull's testing disasters last year? What happened in Melbourne pre exclusion? Podium, then later 3 wins.

Be realistic here, it is the first day of testing.

[mclaren111]

The Sidepods seems to start futher back than last year.



Am I correct or is Side Pylons futher forward

[Felipe 92]

[Thunder]

Ah ye olde "Front Wing flex" Camera. Good to see they are out early Today.