mith wrote:I somehow can't believe that McLaren is getting faster every race by around 0.2s. 19*0.2s=3.8s. Given, they have improved by around 2s frantically developing their car last year, I can't imagine their development pace to be almost twice as fast now.
Again and again this quote is being either misread or misunderstood.
To quote Whitmarsh, again:
We speak to everyone in the company quite regularly and, if you are making 0.2-0.3 seconds improvement per race, although it doesn't sound enough, over four races that is one second.
"Red Bull won't stand still. They are a good organisation and we just have to make sure that we are improving at a faster rate than them.
0.2-0.3 seconds improvement per race, for the
MP4-25. This is irrespective to any other car on the track, just in terms of the progression of the MP4-25. To spell it out even clearer, it is as if they were to say adding a newly developed front wing will provide the car with an improvement on their own lap time of 0.2 seconds. Red Bull may bring 0.2 seconds of improvement to a race, and thus McLarens development would not do anything but keep them at par to where they were prior.
Your argument of stating that McLaren would then have an overall improvement advantage of 3.8 seconds (compared to 2.5 last year) is RESPECTIVE to other cars on the track. Sure, they would experience a 3.8 second per lap increase if everyone in the field stood still and did not develop their cars, however that of course is not the case.
I'm not really sure why this concept seems so difficult to understand?