McLaren MCL34 speculation thread

[Thunder]

@mclaren111: There is no Picture of the MCL34. Only one blurry Thumbnail of an MCL33 (or an orange Tetris Stone ). Reveal is on February 14th.

This is the Thumbnail that was "revealed":

and here it it aahahahaha
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DwDVijxXQAEz12U.jpg

[charliesmithhd]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu5IgVB9dUk&t=56s
fundamental problem explained

[f1rules]

First exact explanation of the problem, hope he is right as there is hope then, priestly always a pleasure to listen to
Thanks for sharing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu5IgVB9dUk&t=56s
fundamental problem explained

[LM10]

Would have McLaren not been allowed to fix the major problem Priestley mentioned (incorrect distance between axle and sidepods)? I'm not sure about what and to which extent is legally changeable during season.

Of course such a change would have completely affected most of the other areas on the car and they most likely would have been even less competitive, but at least they would have been able to already address the problems and prepare more effectively.

[godlameroso]

First exact explanation of the problem, hope he is right as there is hope then, priestly always a pleasure to listen to
Thanks for sharing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu5IgVB9dUk&t=56s
fundamental problem explained

What piece of bodywork is between the front wheels and the sidepods, answer, bargeboards, exactly what I've been saying since MARCH of 2018. I even made a thread in the aero section.

[M840TR]

Would have McLaren not been allowed to fix the major problem Priestley mentioned (incorrect distance between axle and sidepods)? I'm not sure about what and to which extent is legally changeable during season.

Of course such a change would have completely affected most of the other areas on the car and they most likely would have been even less competitive, but at least they would have been able to already address the problems and prepare more effectively.

To elaborate what he said, the distance between the front tyre and sidepod was too short. Many members have been critical of this since the reveal. They made the wheelbase so short that the bargeboards couldn’t produce any outwash, resulting in diffuser stall by tyre wake.
The change would’ve entaild a longer chassis and some aero tweaks. Totally legal.

[RonDennis]

Would have McLaren not been allowed to fix the major problem Priestley mentioned (incorrect distance between axle and sidepods)? I'm not sure about what and to which extent is legally changeable during season.

Of course such a change would have completely affected most of the other areas on the car and they most likely would have been even less competitive, but at least they would have been able to already address the problems and prepare more effectively.

They were, but it was already too late. That's why they said they would have introduced a b-spec if they would have found the problem earlier on. I'm actually amazed it took them that long.

McLaren's executive chairman and shareholder Sheikh Mohammed bin Essa Al Khalifa has now revealed that with the problem being unsolvable without a chassis change, that the team would have prepared a new car if it had known early enough.

"[Nothing] would have fixed it," he said. "And had we discovered that in April we would have had a B-car by now. But it was too late."

Asked when the team fully realised how big the problem was, he said: "Not until after the summer break. By the time it was confirmed, it was too late."

But where had the McLaren engineers gone wrong? Stella explains, "Our 2017 model was a good foundation. We wanted to develop that further. In certain corners, we lost massively to the Red Bulletins in 2017. We wanted to turn off that, but have transferred this weakness to the new car. In retrospect, we've gone too far in some things and created some aerodynamic issues that put us in a dead end. "

The McLaren MCL33 could not maintain the contact pressure in curves over the entire course from turning to accelerating. To keep the downforce reasonably stable, McLaren made do with the mallet method. Bigger wings. They drove the air resistance upwards. And that cost top speed. The McLaren were among the slowest cars on the straight.

With the problem of fluctuating downforce McLaren was not alone. Stella pushes the phenomenon on the wider cars. "The larger front wheels produce greater turbulence than they did before 2017. The main task of aerodynamics today is to get a handle on this turbulence. The wider subsoil exacerbates the problem. Because it contributes more to the overall output than in the past. "According to Stella, this is also the secret of the top teams:" Anyone who manages to control the downforce better over the entire corner is in a different category. "

[Dipesh1995]

Imo, this raises more questions than answers.

Cornering cannot be simulated 100% accurately in the wind tunnel due to the requirements of curved flow for true cornering conditions. Regarding CFD however, no such physical limitations exist. Whilst its true that CFD has its own numerical limitations, McLaren's problem was so fundamental that CFD surely would have at least indicated that the distance between the front wheel and downstream bodywork would be an issue in terms of outwash potential. This raises the question that do McLaren even perform cornering CFD simulations?

Also, the bargeboards were pretty much the same as the MCL32 and looking at the images of the MCL32 and MCL33, to me, the distance between the front wheel and sidepods etc looks about the same too; yet the MCL32 did not have aerodynamic consistency issues. Maybe the MCL32's sidepods etc were less susceptible to the detrimental effects of tyre wake? All a bit baffling tbh.

[Jackles-UK]

First exact explanation of the problem, hope he is right as there is hope then, priestly always a pleasure to listen to
Thanks for sharing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu5IgVB9dUk&t=56s
fundamental problem explained

What piece of bodywork is between the front wheels and the sidepods, answer, bargeboards, exactly what I've been saying since MARCH of 2018. I even made a thread in the aero section.

You can have the greatest bargeboard set-up on the grid but if no air flow is feeding them they become redundant. That is what I think they mean by “fundamental issue”, if adding a more complex barge board could fix the issue they’d have done it straight away.

If the airflow is missing the barge boards entirely or hitting them at a really acute angle whilst the car is in yaw (due to the tyre being positioned too close) then the flow won’t re-attach and won’t be funnelled back to the diffuser. Think of the coanda exhaust ramps of 2013 - too steep and the plume doesn’t attach, too flat and the plume doesn’t reach the diffuser.

[RonDennis]

First exact explanation of the problem, hope he is right as there is hope then, priestly always a pleasure to listen to
Thanks for sharing

What piece of bodywork is between the front wheels and the sidepods, answer, bargeboards, exactly what I've been saying since MARCH of 2018. I even made a thread in the aero section.

You can have the greatest bargeboard set-up on the grid but if no air flow is feeding them they become redundant. That is what I think they mean by “fundamental issue”, if adding a more complex barge board could fix the issue they’d have done it straight away.

If the airflow is missing the barge boards entirely or hitting them at a really acute angle whilst the car is in yaw (due to the tyre being positioned too close) then the flow won’t re-attach and won’t be funnelled back to the diffuser. Think of the coanda exhaust ramps of 2013 - too steep and the plume doesn’t attach, too flat and the plume doesn’t reach the diffuser.

Exactly, everything behind the wheels isn't working like they expected.

[charliesmithhd]

What piece of bodywork is between the front wheels and the sidepods, answer, bargeboards, exactly what I've been saying since MARCH of 2018. I even made a thread in the aero section.

You can have the greatest bargeboard set-up on the grid but if no air flow is feeding them they become redundant. That is what I think they mean by “fundamental issue”, if adding a more complex barge board could fix the issue they’d have done it straight away.

If the airflow is missing the barge boards entirely or hitting them at a really acute angle whilst the car is in yaw (due to the tyre being positioned too close) then the flow won’t re-attach and won’t be funnelled back to the diffuser. Think of the coanda exhaust ramps of 2013 - too steep and the plume doesn’t attach, too flat and the plume doesn’t reach the diffuser.

Exactly, everything behind the wheels isn't working like they expected.

It’s actually quite weird how they were alright in the 1st few races with a car that they didn’t understand. Also, if they achieved high downforce by increasing wing angle-(therefore begins decent in slow speed tracks like Singapore) why didn’t other teams add more wing?

[godlameroso]

First exact explanation of the problem, hope he is right as there is hope then, priestly always a pleasure to listen to
Thanks for sharing

What piece of bodywork is between the front wheels and the sidepods, answer, bargeboards, exactly what I've been saying since MARCH of 2018. I even made a thread in the aero section.

You can have the greatest bargeboard set-up on the grid but if no air flow is feeding them they become redundant. That is what I think they mean by “fundamental issue”, if adding a more complex barge board could fix the issue they’d have done it straight away.

If the airflow is missing the barge boards entirely or hitting them at a really acute angle whilst the car is in yaw (due to the tyre being positioned too close) then the flow won’t re-attach and won’t be funnelled back to the diffuser. Think of the coanda exhaust ramps of 2013 - too steep and the plume doesn’t attach, too flat and the plume doesn’t reach the diffuser.

It's not about the complexity of the bargeboard, it's about a specific part of the bargeboard that they didn't do right.

[RonDennis]

You can have the greatest bargeboard set-up on the grid but if no air flow is feeding them they become redundant. That is what I think they mean by “fundamental issue”, if adding a more complex barge board could fix the issue they’d have done it straight away.

If the airflow is missing the barge boards entirely or hitting them at a really acute angle whilst the car is in yaw (due to the tyre being positioned too close) then the flow won’t re-attach and won’t be funnelled back to the diffuser. Think of the coanda exhaust ramps of 2013 - too steep and the plume doesn’t attach, too flat and the plume doesn’t reach the diffuser.

Exactly, everything behind the wheels isn't working like they expected.

It’s actually quite weird how they were alright in the 1st few races with a car that they didn’t understand. Also, if they achieved high downforce by increasing wing angle-(therefore begins decent in slow speed tracks like Singapore) why didn’t other teams add more wing?

Well, I don't share that opinion. They were utter crap from day 1 and only scored big points because of the mistakes of others. You could already see it on the comparisons with last year. McLaren should have made the biggest jump of all teams, but on some tracks they were just a couple of tenths quicker, while there were much quicker tires available in quali.

Just take Brasil for example:

McLaren
1:09.593 (2017)
1:09.402 (2018) - 0.191

Mercedes
1:08.322 (2017)
1:07.281 (2018) -1.041

So McLaren did only improve with a tenth, while Mercedes is going around a full second quicker. It shows how terrible this chassis was and how big the problems were.

Or in USA they were actually slower.

McLaren
1:35.007 (2017)
1:35.294 (2018)

That's why it annoys when people claim that the 2017 chassis was crap, because it clearly wasn't. Although it also wasn't as good as the top 3.

[Jackles-UK]

It’s actually quite weird how they were alright in the 1st few races with a car that they didn’t understand. Also, if they achieved high downforce by increasing wing angle-(therefore begins decent in slow speed tracks like Singapore) why didn’t other teams add more wing?

Most teams are still getting to know their cars to some extent at the start of the year, McLarens issue just meant that they couldn’t keep pace as others progressed throughout the season.

[mwillems]

First exact explanation of the problem, hope he is right as there is hope then, priestly always a pleasure to listen to
Thanks for sharing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu5IgVB9dUk&t=56s
fundamental problem explained

What piece of bodywork is between the front wheels and the sidepods, answer, bargeboards, exactly what I've been saying since MARCH of 2018. I even made a thread in the aero section.

hahahaha

Listen, you were as wrong as you were right. Plenty of people, myself included, were arguing since June that this was a chassis problem that was causing the Aero to be so rubbish. So we were also correct. As correct as you in fact.....!

You said Bageboard area (Correct) and aero fix (Wrong, would never work).
We said Chassis problem (Correct) and wherever else (Wrong).

For me I'm not that technical, but it was clear from the information coming from different places within Mclaren that this was not a straight forward aero issue and was related to correlation that was not replicated in the wind tunnel. In fact there is a post somewhere where I state specifically that this issue appears to be due to on track behaviour of the car that caused the aero to degrade in performance, and I said that fairly early. But I guessed this to be suspension, from the information around. Someone suggested pitch and yaw, others said rear suspension (me).

Perhaps a bit more open mindedness from all sides would have merged those two notions together of BB and chassis and worked out the flaw.