Andres125sx wrote: ↑29 Sep 2017, 08:49
What you call a few tweaks has been a completely revised car, FW, bargeboards, floor, diffuser, RW, Twing, monkey seat, T-tray.... the whole car has changed during the season
Hardly, certainly compared to the rest of the field.
The rate of develpoment is irrelevant
Ehhm no it's not, especially not in the first year of a ruleset.
Do you know how effective was STR aero at the beginning of the season before assuming their development was better?. What if it was useless and they had to redesign the whole car?
Never said it was better, although it is reasonable to assume so. McLaren has seen the least aero development by far.
To me McLaren car being similar to the very first version of the season means their CFD work was great and they didn´t need to change too many things, opposite to your point of view assuming they should have changed the car completely.
Sure, McLaren, who hasn't had any success since 2012, has such great aero that they completely nailed the ruleset on their first try and doesn't need any additional tiny elements where literally the rest of the field does need that.
The argument "well maybe they don't need it" completely falls in the water if the rest of the field does need it. Outside of the fact that they are nowhere in terms of pace, and even the tracks that suit them they are the fourth best team, if they are lucky. And no, that cannot all be blamed on Honda.
Did Ferrari and Mercedes changed their car completely?
I'm sure you expected a 'no' to this question, so I'm sorry to disappoint. But yes, they did. Mercedes completely revamped their front aero with the cape and smaller nose cone.
Ferrari made many changes as well, and for this race they had additional cooling intakes in the airbox, which would indicate a change to their cooling setup.
Perhaps we have different views on this, but I would consider these bigger changes than raising the connection point of the barge boards on the tub or an update to the rear wing end plate.
You´re asking for a new car mid-season, to me that would be disastrous. I do prefer evolution, wich means the changes are not drastic because the first car was good.
No I'm not. There simply is no way that a team would completely nail a new ruleset on the first try. Which essentially makes in-season development very important, everyone is still looking at what works and the philosophy that teams will follow with this ruleset. McLAren has done very little in that regard, and these real life km's they could have used to dump parts on to look what sticks(considering how they threw away the year very early already) aren't coming back.
EDIT: mclaren111 posted a pic of an updated barge board package, neat.