2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

[Talisman]

When you're finishing as far back as McLaren was last year (mostly DNF or well out of the points) it doesn't make much of a difference how good you pit stops are. If you finish 14 or 13th the points are still 0. Even if they might have gained 1 point 3 times from pits stops, highly unlikely, they would still have been more than 10 point behind the next team up in the constructors.

The same argument could be used for wasting money on developing the chassis. What was the point if the PU was bad enough that any development would either result in a DNF or a low points finish at the very best? Why bother even turning up to the races?

The reality is that poor pitstops have been a problem for McLaren before Honda even signed a contract with them. By all means blame Honda for the lack of performance, reliability, 9th WCC place and losing sponsors but don't try to pretend they are to blame for issues like pitstops.

In fact Brown himself pointed out that poor pitstops are an issue for McLaren and the PU in the back of the car has nothing to do with it.

"Just look at pitstops," he said. "They are not at the area they need to be. That has nothing to do with what power unit you have."

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/13416 ... d-for-2018

That is a far more sensible take on the matter.

[DFX]

It is all hind sight but what McLaren is saying is disgenuine to me.
1. It is racing at the top level I would expect to extract every second and not having a good pit stop is just that. Nothing to do with PU. Practice. If you have the attitude of it doesn’t matter because our Pu is so bad then you probably shouldn’t be in racing.
2. What Goss said bothers me. This is Racing, you do everything you can to Win, score point. If sacrifice some drivability but give you even a little chance to defend in straight, you should do it. Extract the lowest lap time is not the objective of racing. I just watched grand tour’s episode about lancia racing against audi in rally. Lancia did everything to help them win even if the Car don’t have 4wd. You race to win, to score a few more point.

It sounds more like McLaren has a problem with their attitude and vision in racing.

I have to disagree with that.

Rally and F1 are completely different sports and in F1 the setup that give you the lowest lap time is indeed the best strategy and is the objective of all teams in there. Sacrificing drivability could, it may or may not, improve the lap time, but at which cost? Higher tires degradation, more stress to the chassis, less consistency lap by lap (higher chance of driver error) are some of the issues.

Although I agree that the Honda PU is not an excuse for poor pit stops performances we need to read the underlines of what Boullier tried to say.
The fact that the car was indeed stuck in the garage for a good portion of the time between practice sessions this season will in fact hamper the ability of the team to train these fundamentals.

As some here have already said, the pit crew are not in a dedicated task, the crew composed of mechanics and if they are working in the car they can't practice. If the car itself is being worked, they can't practice. And excluding all of that they have a lot of other roles and work to do in the meanwhile (We can see how tired and sleepy the pit crew of all the teams are in the TV shots, most even take a nap from time to time).

Some suggested that the team should practice in between races, those people clearly dont know how tight is the logistics and schedule of a F1 team. Some even suggested that the team should practice after the race, which is completely absurd as first, they can't use the pit lane for that and second they have to start packing all the gear to be dispatched for the next race.

[techman]

if you compare a team like williams who have a fraction of the budget and mainly a midfield team but they are the on average do the fastest pitstops in F1. they could also come out and gives excuses like we dont have much money or we really dont need to practice pitstop that hards because we really are a midfield team. but do they give excuses or point fingers? NO but however they have the best pitstop because they are not whinners like some teams.

It is quite obvious mclaren want to get rid of honda from the very begining and i will give you evidence.
1. honda boss in an interview after the split ,said mclaren gave them cold shoulder in the pits from the very begining on 2017.
2. sauber vasseur in an interview said it took him only a hour to break the honda contract and the reason been he had an issue about getting a mclaren gearbox for the honda. He himself said that he spoke with some mclaren members and they basically told him that the honda partnership is over. so it is understandable that sauber will not get a gearbox for honda from mclaren. however honda did not know about this decision that was already taken by mclaren to split.
3. public humilitation of honda. calling them out saying mclaren are here to win but not honda. its as low as you get giving bad image to a partner.
4. running heavy donwforce on fast tracks just to put more blame on them. in a japanese article honda engineers were unhappy about mclaren runinng more dowforce in brazil where as all other team ran lower wing levels. its now confirmed by Tim Goss in his recent statement.
5. neale in the prime time doco confirmining that enough is enough with honda and should end

The these above thing were done to break the honda contract without paying them a single cent. and they were able to do it. honda are bit too nice in my opinion. mclaren shouldnt have got away without breaking the contract and not paying any compensation. let see if mclaren can at least match redbull with the same renault engine in 2018,

[diffuser]

The same argument could be used for wasting money on developing the chassis. What was the point if the PU was bad enough that any development would either result in a DNF or a low points finish at the very best? Why bother even turning up to the races?

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When the aero formula doesn't change the chassis is an evolusion. If you stop developing for a year you fall behind by a year... Just like PUs
Were as pit stop are fairly easy to catch up.
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The reality is that poor pitstops have been a problem for McLaren before Honda even signed a contract with them. By all means blame Honda for the lack of performance, reliability, 9th WCC place and losing sponsors but don't try to pretend they are to blame for issues like pitstops.

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Can't help you there, that ship has sailed. It's McLaren F1 and they decided to put the horns on Honda. The good news we'll find out soon if they were right or wrong.
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In fact Brown himself pointed out that poor pitstops are an issue for McLaren and the PU in the back of the car has nothing to do with it.
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I agree its a problem for this year but last year they had bigger fish to fry. That's what we were talking about, last year.

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"Just look at pitstops," he said. "They are not at the area they need to be. That has nothing to do with what power unit you have."

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/13416 ... d-for-2018

That is a far more sensible take on the matter.

[McHonda]

Goss said McLaren had decided not to try to compensate for Honda's lack of straightline performance with a low-drag 2017 design or set-ups.

"Even trimming a bit of downforce off the car and trimming to a lower wing level, we were still not going to get our car to the point where we have that raceability in a straight line," he said.

"So our approach has been to always go for the quickest laptime and our tactics coming to a race weekend were to qualify as well as we can, and then aim to defend that position based on laptime. In some races that was extremely difficult.

This was what i suspected and said,mclaren running heavy downforce, which is true. example in monza all others ran skinny rear wings except mclaren. i posted a link before where mclaren in brazil did a top speed close to the top guys in friday practice and the times were good but however in saturday they reverted back to the more downforce high drag configuration. and boasted how good their car was in corners. well now we know what happened to the some of the lost top speeds for mclaren in the race. like all other teams, in places like brazil and monza where they are long straight you should run less rear wing but mclaren does the opposite

And Goss explained why they didn't as it still wouldn't have made them competitive on the straights and it would've hurt car performance elsewhere (Tyres mainly I suspect). So they chased ultimate lap performance instead.

In case you were unaware it's not McLaren's job to hurt overall lap time and performance just to make Honda look a little less incompetent on the straight. Which is all trimming the wings entirely would've done. What you're asking for is McLaren to sacrifice themselves to make Honda look better than they are, not to actually make them better.

It would've been entirely fake. If you're happy with that as a Honda man then great but I want actual performance and not a mirage of one created at the cost of overall performance for the team they are involved with.

[techman]

And Goss explained why they didn't as it still wouldn't have made them competitive on the straights and it would've hurt car performance elsewhere (Tyres mainly I suspect). So they chased ultimate lap performance instead.

In case you were unaware it's not McLaren's job to hurt overall lap time and performance just to make Honda look a little less incompetent on the straight. Which is all trimming the wings entirely would've done. What you're asking for is McLaren to sacrifice themselves to make Honda look better than they are, not to actually make them better.

It would've been entirely fake. If you're happy with that as a Honda man then great but I want actual performance and not a mirage of one created at the cost of overall performance for the team they are involved with.

read my above posts. its a mclaren conspiracy to give honda a bad image and get out of the honda contract without paying a cent to honda for breaking the contract. this started very early on in 2017 and i have stated this with facts above. mclaren dont want honda , put honda in bad position even on tracks when you dont need to run max donwforce so they will look bad and eventually demand honda to break the contract so they can find another manufacturer. there plan worked out perfect for mclaren.

[McHonda]

And Goss explained why they didn't as it still wouldn't have made them competitive on the straights and it would've hurt car performance elsewhere (Tyres mainly I suspect). So they chased ultimate lap performance instead.

In case you were unaware it's not McLaren's job to hurt overall lap time and performance just to make Honda look a little less incompetent on the straight. Which is all trimming the wings entirely would've done. What you're asking for is McLaren to sacrifice themselves to make Honda look better than they are, not to actually make them better.

It would've been entirely fake. If you're happy with that as a Honda man then great but I want actual performance and not a mirage of one created at the cost of overall performance for the team they are involved with.

read my above posts. its a mclaren conspiracy to give honda a bad image and get out of the honda contract without paying a cent to honda for breaking the contract. this started very early on in 2017 and i have stated this with facts above. mclaren dont want honda , put honda in bad position even on tracks when you dont need to run max donwforce so they will look bad and eventually demand honda to break the contract so they can find another manufacturer. there plan worked out perfect for mclaren.

No team is going to sacrifice overall performance to make a partner look better than they are. And not covering for them doesn't point to a conspiracy to get out of a deal for free at all.

As for your so called facts..

1)Cold shoulders after delivering what Honda had delivered, that would be entirely expected, would you be expecting high fives?
2)Sauber running away after seeing that engine in action is hardly surprising.We now know what Ferrari were offering too so it's a no-brainer.
3)The truth is the truth
4)And no Goss didn't confirm running heavy downforce to put more blame on Honda, that's still in your own head.
5)Haven't seen it yet but saying enough is enough in a public forum hardly screams conspiracy to me.

Most of the things you say point to a conspiracy could be taken as final warnings to pull their finger out and indeed we know they set Honda a target to hit which doesn't sound like conspiring to break away to me.

Maybe Honda delivered a dud to conspire to get McLaren to ditch them so they could go to Red Bull? Conspiracies are fun...

[Thunder]

Would you guys stop the McLaren vs. Honda battle finally? Just get over it. They are divorced. Time to move on.

[Andres125sx]

Being realistic would be to try to understand what Eric has tried to say, or if it is unclear at least try to cover few angles and not to jump gun and take secenario that best suits you.

Most sensible post in last pages

[Thunder]

Ok so to have that on this Page also. Stop the endless McLaren vs. Honda banter. It is annoying as Hell.

Either accept the divorce and the Fact both McLaren and Honda managed to break up without hard feelings or tell yourself SILENTLY that is the other Parties Fault if that makes you sleep better. But stop the bickering Please.

[604gtir]

Ok so to have that on this Page also. Stop the endless McLaren vs. Honda banter. It is annoying as Hell.

Either accept the divorce and the Fact both McLaren and Honda managed to break up without hard feelings or tell yourself SILENTLY that is the other Parties Fault if that makes you sleep better. But stop the bickering Please.

Thanks, the discussion was good until a particular person who is consistently bringing it up to stir up the pot. Could we simply remove his posts.

[GoranF1]

Zak Brown on McLaren’s Trying 2017 Formula 1 Season

https://marshallpruett.podbean.com/e/mp ... -1-season/

[mclaren111]

MSW.com

http://www.f1reader.com/#/news/f1-podiu ... n-189130


Some good comments by Zak

[Nonserviam85]

Be Brave seems to be the motto for this year's McLaren Team according to the latest instagram post. White and orange will probably be the new car colours (or at least this is what they hint).

[Squid]

McLaren strikes Dell deal as it seeks return to F1's fast lane

https://news.sky.com/story/mclaren-stri ... e-11240552

It will be also a technical partnership rather than just sponsorship:

The deal will involve the computing giant providing software and hardware to McLaren's various businesses, including the F1 team and its Applied Technologies division, according to a source close to the alliance.