Mclaren MP4-30 Honda

[Marc.W]

Fernando is probably having flashbacks of his last 3 years at Ferrari with a car that slidy, I'm sure they're just running a generic setup though

[ozzimark]

Green marking on the sidewalls; Intermediate tires.

I couldn't tell if any of the other cars that drove by were on inters as well, or slicks.

[ian_s]

they wont have been able to do a lot of setup work, and as said the tires were probably not hot enough to grip properly.
what looked good though was that is seemed to be so controllable when sliding, and not just losing grip and spinning off.

[Rikhart]

A better quality video, that car needs a loooooooooooooooooot of work. Alonso is around 1.20.

[SectorOne]

are they running a log exhaust?

[PlatinumZealot]

Huge turbo-lag. Sounds like they are not using the MGUH to spin up the turbo here.

How do you when driver exactly did push the throttle? It might be that Alonso was just being cautious. I don't believe it is possible to deduce presence of turbo lag by sound alone especially when not in 100% performance lap.

You don't listen to cars much do you?
You can tell when the tone of the spooling changes. It spools quickly in response to the drivers foot then you hear an even quicker sharper rise afterwards. If you were to look on a dyno graph you would see how big turbos have a huge climb in boost after they spool up. The effect is even more pronounced because these engines are so small. Coming out of the slow corners you hear it better. Rosberg in Abudahbi you could hear his turbo spooling unaided too after his ERS had failed.

[Moose]

You don't listen to cars much do you?
You can tell when the tone of the spooling changes. It spools quickly in response to the drivers foot then you hear an even quicker sharper rise afterwards. If you were to look on a dyno graph you would see how big turbos have a huge climb in boost after they spool up. The effect is even more pronounced because these engines are so small. Coming out of the slow corners you hear it better. Rosberg in Abudahbi you could hear his turbo spooling unaided too after his ERS had failed.

That can be explained in other ways. For example, the car could have very little turbo lag, and fernando put his foot on the pedal in two discrete stages.

I mean, I tend to agree with you, but it's far from cut and dried.

[taperoo2k]

Why is car behaving like this?

I'd assume it's because they've not got all the various systems working properly yet, so they've not had much of a chance to work on the cars driveability and seeing if the Aerodynamics match the work done back at the factory over the winter. Once they do, I think we'll see a much better handling MP4-30 at the final test (I hope).

[timbo]

from the point were the car starts to accelerate and revs start to increase, you can hear the turbo start to spool too, and its still spooling up at the end of the video, so thats about 3 seconds to not reach maximum boost/fueling. that sounds like turbo lag to me.

But remember, the engines are fuel-to-rev limited based on the rules. They need as much pressure as fuel they get.

Anyway, on the later vids it definitely apparent that the engine lacks driveability, due to a lag or not.

[atlantis]

Perhaps he's sliding because the brake-by-wire is still young and has to be tuned (brakes too hard, gives bad response to the driver)
edit: well, he's sliding also exiting curves, so it's also power delivery

[frosty125]

Looks like power delivery needs some work hopefully they will get it working better fairly quickly definitely looks similar to how the Ferrari PU was delivering this time last year. I thought turbo lag was almost a non issue in all of these modern power units as you have a MGU K to deliver instant torque and a MGU H to spool up the turbo. I thought it was all down to the electronically controlled delivery.

[Richard]

Is it just me or is that safety light now looking suspiciously coanda-exhaust-ramp like?

The close proximity of the exhaust and rear crash structure suggests that something is going on.

EBL is the new EBD

Exhaust blown light - you heard it here first!

[f1316]

Is it just me or is that safety light now looking suspiciously coanda-exhaust-ramp like?

The close proximity of the exhaust and rear crash structure suggests that something is going on.

EBL is the new EBD

Exhaust blown light - you heard it here first!

So what are the regs on that crash structure? I noticed that, for example, the Williams and torro rosso ones are a slightly different shape. Can you actually shape it or add strakes to the sides to channel gases?

All seems a bit unlikely to me (and I don't understand the regs, hence the question) but stranger things have happened in F1.

[Richard]

Remember the adage - If your comment isn't about a part of the car then it doesn't belong in the car thread.

Posts about lap times and Alsonso's amazing catches have been deleted. Yes he can play baseball or cricket while driving at the same time. Surely the fastest fielder in history?

[lkocev]

Engine sounds remarkably loud, even downshifting sounds almost like exhaust blown diffuser era. Perhaps they are running very open wastegate and not much engagement of MGU-H.

Looks quite a handful to drive though...