2016 McLaren F1 Team - Honda

[GoranF1]

Looking at Alonso onboards it doesnt look like that car has fundamental rear suspension problema....in fact it looks like a car whit the least need to do stearing wheel corrections that Alonso has driven in a decade.

I suggest re-watching Suzuka qualifying and the race.

What about AD?

[Wazari]

Trying to analyze suspension effectiveness/issues from looking at an onboard video is like a doctor trying to diagnose a patient just by looking at a photograph of them.

[Wazari]

[Quoted, deleted post removed]
I have never said that the PU was not the principal reason for the MP4-31's results. And you capitalize YOU as only me being blind? The people that think 99.9% of the problem was strictly attributed to the PU are the blind ones.

[ME4ME]

Trying to analyze suspension effectiveness/issues from looking at an onboard video is like a doctor trying to diagnose a patient just by looking at a photograph of them.

You're not wrong here.

But who do you blame, the doctor who tries to work with what he's got, or the patient who is activly hiding all interesting information. I guess the bottom line is the doctor should just call it a day and go home. In essence that's what F1 viewers are doing.

If you know the patient, please tell him to be less secretive. Best regards, the doctor.

[Wazari]

Trying to analyze suspension effectiveness/issues from looking at an onboard video is like a doctor trying to diagnose a patient just by looking at a photograph of them.

You're not wrong here.

But who do you blame, the doctor who tries to work with what he's got, or the patient who is activly hiding all interesting information. I guess the bottom line is the doctor should just call it a day and go home. In essence that's what F1 viewers are doing.

If you know the patient, please tell him to be less secretive. Best regards, the doctor.

Some patients are just very private or have trouble finding a good doctor they can confide in.

[ncassi22]

Looking at Alonso onboards it doesnt look like that car has fundamental rear suspension problema....in fact it looks like a car whit the least need to do stearing wheel corrections that Alonso has driven in a decade.

I suggest re-watching Suzuka qualifying and the race.

What about AD?

Well now that you mention it. Look at the onboards. As soon as Alonso starts moving towards and past the apex the car is pretty 'floaty' at the back. Now he's obviously on the limit but it seemed pretty pronounced. It seems as if he backs off alot as there is none of that nervousness on the wheel once he's at the final part/exit of the corners.... IMO obviously.

edit - The above is my opinion based on the Suzuka footage.

[adrianjordan]

Trying to analyze suspension effectiveness/issues from looking at an onboard video is like a doctor trying to diagnose a patient just by looking at a photograph of them.

You're not wrong here.

But who do you blame, the doctor who tries to work with what he's got, or the patient who is activly hiding all interesting information. I guess the bottom line is the doctor should just call it a day and go home. In essence that's what F1 viewers are doing.

If you know the patient, please tell him to be less secretive. Best regards, the doctor.

Some patients are just very private or have trouble finding a good doctor they can confide in.

To quote my favourite TV doctor; "everybody lies..."

[Wazari]

You're not wrong here.

But who do you blame, the doctor who tries to work with what he's got, or the patient who is activly hiding all interesting information. I guess the bottom line is the doctor should just call it a day and go home. In essence that's what F1 viewers are doing.

If you know the patient, please tell him to be less secretive. Best regards, the doctor.

Some patients are just very private or have trouble finding a good doctor they can confide in.

To quote my favourite TV doctor; "everybody lies..."

Never in F1.....

[cliffgamerz]

No one really knows much better than Honda engineers themselves, so trust Wazari san as i do.

[RedNEO]

Scarbs and engineers from other teams have praised mclarens chassis as being top three. Not as good as Mercedes or redbull but able to compete with Ferrari. I believe them over a biased Honda engineer trying to protect his legacy as they have no reason to have an agenda.

[AnthonyG]

Scarbs and engineers from other teams have praised mclarens chassis as being top three. Not as good as Mercedes or redbull but able to compete with Ferrari. I believe them over a biased Honda engineer trying to protect his legacy as they have no reason to have an agenda.

A top three chassis only starts from p5, P7 if you consider the Ferrari slightly better.

[KeiKo403]

Can we (as fans/armchair engineers) make truly accurate PU/chassis judgements?

McLaren could have a really good chassis but it might look unbalanced in some vids because there's always got to be a compromise somewhere. IF the PU is down on HP then you don't want to setup your car with a lot of downforce because that's just drag on the straight which is no good. So lets put less downforce on and get the top speed out of the engine but then that's no good in the corners, but it might go faster in a straight line than a Merc, does that make the Honda PU al of a sudden the PU to beat and McLaren the worst chassis ever? I don't think (m)any of us here have the ability to be 100% unbiased and have the relevant knowledge to state xHP down as fact.

Because we don't know how 'not good' the Honda PU is then we don't know how much of a compromise McLaren is having to make.

I'd much rather rely the opinions from the likes of Scarbs and other teams engineers (who are a whole lot more up close and personal to the cars than may of us are). So if they're saying that McLaren has the 3rd best chassis then I'm be happy to take that as a fairly accurate rating.

[diffuser]

Well that fits in with my pet peeve that F1 as a sport does a really bad job of supplying good statistics.

It is a statistic driven sport yet F1 doesn't supply us with any of them. They charge us for a tool that just gives us the basics and it is a replacement for something they gave away. There existed privately built free tools that used the old java based timing tool data as input to give us some historical data(like you could look at sector time for any 10 laps).

If you really want to dig into performance causes, you need to be able to isolate the car timing on different parts of the track and compare to other cars. Sectors are just to large.

I'm sure Wazari could tell us better than I what kind of telemetry or statics would be interesting to have from all cars that would allow us to find out what the real performance limitation is?

[Wazari]

It really boils down what is concerned "propriety" data and what the FIA deems "public" data. Also throw in the never ending thought of "how can we profit from it". The amount of data collected every second the car is running is overwhelming. There are sensors all over the car. I think what would be interesting to most people would be tire temperature and pressures at any given point, fuel flow rate (although this would be considered too sensitive) and battery charge/discharge rates. I personally would probably want to see fuel temps from all the other cars at any given point, brake temps and inlet and exhaust temps.

[diffuser]

WOW, I never see them giving us those ....

I also don't see how they help us find out where the sources of performance issues are on a car are.....Perhaps it is my lack of familiarity with these stats....How would a lack of mechanical grip have shown itself in those stats? Would we have have excessive increase in tire temp from wheel spin on acceleration ?