McLaren MP4-29 Mercedes

[ringo]

If you can't make progress with your own work, you copy. Works every time!

The chassis is good in my eyes. It is very modifiable.

Here are a few things i would change on this car:

[*]Wheel base, it may need to increase to allow for:
[*]Changing radiator layout to the typical slant down layout, which does take up more real estate but with a longer car that's not an issue.
[*]with lower, more aero efficient radiators, we can now reduce side pod height and lower radiator exhaust exit size. Bring down the sidepod shoulders, round them a bit and lower the outlet and flatten the top area of the engine cover over the gearbox.
[*]Make a new front wing with elliptical profiles like what redbull have been doing for the past 4 years.

And there you have it. An improve Mclaren. All these things are what i visually discern anyway. So from this i would say they have a large scope for improvement. And they can do it. Mclaren are known to bring bigger bodywork changes to a car than any other team.

[KingHamilton01]

I can't believe i am writing this but seeing Jenson saying they're maxed out on the Front Wing makes me think they really need a complete redesign of it. Not sure if they can incorporate a low Nose Design (since that seems to be working really well) into their Car but the Front Wing needs massive Work.

Yeah I was thinking that to, maybe go down the mercedes route with the nose, it's not far away now, just cut of the ugly part!

[Dipesh1995]

I think the fundamental car is good but it lacks around 45 points of downforce considering 30 points is worth a second. Its ironic that they have the opposite issues to last year where last year, the car had downforce but had poor drivability whereas this year, they have good drivability but a lack of downforce.
I think that the main improvement to be made to this car is the sidepods; they're just too big and bulky when you compare them to the W05 or the RB10. If they can introduce sidepods like the one's on the MP4-27 (after the Germany update obviously without the Coanda exhausts) with the large undercut and tightly packaged rear bodywork as shown by the link : http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vKD3L93lSrQ/U ... 40/290.jpg, I reckon it would improve the car's performance by 0.5 seconds as it did when they introduced them on the MP4-27 back in Germany 2012 as it would cause the air to accelerate around the sidepods and then on top of the diffuser thus increasing downforce. After looking at images of the cars internal packaging of the sidepods, I think that this design should easily be implemented on the car. It still wont be enough to challenge the Merc's but should make them closer/on par to Red Bull on ultimate performance.

As for the car being front limited due to a lack of downforce, considering the design of the main plane and flaps, I think the cascades need a redesign, there is only one and I don't think it is producing as much downforce as it should be doing because it is quite shallow compared to the RB10's cascades for example.

The good thing is that there is plenty of development scope with this car so improvements should be found quite easily.

[beelsebob]

I think the fundamental car is good but it lacks around 45 points of downforce considering 30 points is worth a second. Its ironic that they have the opposite issues to last year where last year, the car had downforce but had poor drivability whereas this year, they have good drivability but a lack of downforce.

I'm confident that they have the exact same issue this year as they had last year. I think any lack of drivability they had last year was down to a fundamental downforce defect.

[akshat21]

I can't believe i am writing this but seeing Jenson saying they're maxed out on the Front Wing makes me think they really need a complete redesign of it. Not sure if they can incorporate a low Nose Design (since that seems to be working really well) into their Car but the Front Wing needs massive Work.

Yeah I was thinking that to, maybe go down the mercedes route with the nose, it's not far away now, just cut of the ugly part!

U mean give it a circumcision??

(SORRY, had to say it)

[ringo]

The nose is ok. It's the front wings and sidepods.
At the moment Force India have a better car, and they have a similar nose. Williams has a better car and they have a similar nose.
This is reminiscent of 2009 when they overlooked to outwash front wing design. They are going through a similar problem.
The wings are narrower this year, and they haven't gotten on top regaining the performance from it.

Note the offending coolings holes crowding out the top of the engine cover, and compare to the force India

removing the butterflies should allow the cooling to be better distributed out the rear of the car.
The nose can be brought back a bit like the mercedes as well. It does have a massive overhang over the wing.

[JimClarkFan]

why point the finger at button , why not maggie ?
different driver , different set up , same problem of no heat in the front tyres

very simply I didn't hear what Mag had to say about it

You shouldn't take things too personally, I wasn't pointing the finger, I just know what Button said and I just know how he has spoke of problems in the past.

If you can't make progress with your own work, you copy. Works every time!

This is what I think they should do, forget beating the competition just yet, just bring it to their level via imitation.

I'm confident that they have the exact same issue this year as they had last year. I think any lack of drivability they had last year was down to a fundamental downforce defect.

What's the difference?

They said the car had all the necessary changes to give it more downforce than the 2012 car, the problem was the drive-ability prevented it from being usuable.

The problem is which came first, a lack of downforce which caused poor drive-ability, or poor drive-ability which prevented consistent downforce.

[KingHamilton01]

The nose is ok. It's the front wings and sidepods.
At the moment Force India have a better car, and they have a similar nose. Williams has a better car and they have a similar nose.
This is reminiscent of 2009 when they overlooked to outwash front wing design. They are going through a similar problem.
The wings are narrower this year, and they haven't gotten on top regaining the performance from it.

Note the offending coolings holes crowding out the top of the engine cover, and compare to the force India
http://img4.auto-motor-und-sport.de/Par ... 768880.jpg
removing the butterflies should allow the cooling to be better distributed out the rear of the car.
The nose can be brought back a bit like the mercedes as well. It does have a massive overhang over the wing.

akes you wonder if McLaren suffer with cooling issue's? do they really need those 2 long tunnel's at either side running to the back of the car, no one else run's them! I can only hope that McLaren bringing new sidepod's will help aid aero and then they can try and get on top of the front wing and therefore helping front tyres to work better.

[Dipesh1995]

I'm confident that they have the exact same issue this year as they had last year. I think any lack of drivability they had last year was down to a fundamental downforce defect.

Last year's car did have a decent amount of downforce but it was inconsistent downforce which made the car unpredictable and difficult to drive therefore making the car not very usable. Whitmarsh did say that the car was too "peaky" (http://www1.skysports.com/f1/news/12479 ... ens-mp4-28).
However, with this year's car, the downforce on the car is consistent therefore the car has good drivability but the problem is that the car doesn't have enough downforce.

[cossie]

Are they having any of the porpoiseing like last year?!

[CjC]

So at this moment in time, do we think the high outlets at the rear are blowing the butterfly suspension?

[PhillipM]

No, they're exhausting hot air like everyone else outlets do. Just with the butterflies in the way, they're lifted up to feed air above them.

[321apex]

In my view the butterflies belong in entimology lab.
Too much is drawn from weird tricks instead of basic, sensible engineering. Newey designs a fully thought out car, where each inch supports the adjacent inch. McL instead went gangbang into improving the diffuser, almost like all of a sudden finally catching up with 2009. Please!!! The desparation in getting some Red Bull aerodynamicist is understandable. Whitmarsh must have screwed the place royally.

When I saw the butterfiles I thought the car will be so glued at the rear that it would be too much. But during second Bahrain test Jens was complaining about the grip, which at the time I disbelieved, thinking of a decoy tactic. Well since they don't work, I don't believe anyone understands why they were put in place. If Boulier is not going to Ferrari this year, I would like to see him have more chance of "hand on" without Ron interfering.

I would like to take this opportunity to reassure Ron that Eric Boullier is by far more accomplished in what he is doing than the man he replaced. Sadly, the loser will make more money, so much for fairness in life....

Looking at the MP_ sidepods, I have a hunch they were designed by the marketing guy. They are way too squarish at the rear saving billboard sized space on the side, which apparently no one is willing to buy for the season anyway.

[Lycoming]

They tested back-to-back with and without the butterflies at the Bahrain test and they're still on the car, so it would seem that their data suggests that it does indeed work.

[321apex]

They tested back-to-back with and without the butterflies at the Bahrain test and they're still on the car, so it would seem that their data suggests that it does indeed work.

Can you define precisely the meaning of "does indeed work" in the context of finishing a race out of points and qualifying out of top 10.