Mclaren MP4-30 Honda

[Alonso Fan]

Andrew Benson also says that if it weren't for the engine, the McLaren car currently is as good as the Ferrari, and the Canada qualifying backed that up. Vettel had a mguh failure and was 0.4 slower than Alonso even with the second best chassis.

I know its going too much into the results but that probably shows us that McLaren can run small amounts of ers but no where near all of uts capacity. and bbc says its still 75hp down on Mercedes. So lets see what Austria and Silverstone bring

[DiogoBrand]

That engine was made to be smashed into a tiny space and if we're honest, sucks because of it.

My opinion is that they should start with a good PU in terms of performance, and 'shrink' afterwards

How can you be so convinced to make that kind of statements? How do you 'shrink' an engine? As far as the MP4-30 engine goes we have very little information and lots of speculations. We don't even know what kind of problems they are suffering. The ERS is not delivering, sure, but what does that mean, what's the origin of the problem? We don't even know what kind of turbo they are using and where it sits.

You cannot start with a 'big' engine and different packing to then just 'switch' to a 'small' engine, different packing, different aero concept,... midseason.

They chose a big steep mountain to climb, maybe they succeed maybe they won't. What you guys are saying is more like: they should have chosen a smaller mountain, and after having climbed that one, switch to the bigger mountain only to see that you need different gear and an extra amount of time.

What I mean is, while other teams are battling over PU performance, McLaren probably took a lot of liberty out from Honda's development team by restricting them to the smaller volume possible, which would be incredible if it performed well, but it doesn't. And I think that if they want a very small PU, they should first start with a good PU performance wise, and on the following seasons(not mid season, as you interpreted) try to make it smaller, if it doesn't mean a loss in performance.
Ferrari last year had similar problems, when they tried to compromise performance over packaging, and the results were very clear, and then comes Honda and does the same.
I'm not saying I know what are Honda's problems and what aren't they, I'm just saying it is very likely that the order from McLaren for a "size zero" PU has compromised a lot of performance, or reliabilty, whichever their problem is.

[Samraj_official]

mercedes constructed the car around the engine, but it seems honda were forced to design an anaemic engine into a tiny mclaren engine bay and called it integration... =D> ....and so is the fancy "tight packaging"

[acosmichippo]

They're playing the long game. Sure, last year and this year there is more time to be found in the power unit. But as all the teams start to catch up to mercedes, the power differences will be less and less. Maybe not to the degree as it was from 2010-2013, but they're assuming by the time they're caught up, aero *will* have a bigger influence than PU's.

[Jef Patat]

I'm not saying I know what are Honda's problems and what aren't they, I'm just saying it is very likely that the order from McLaren for a "size zero" PU has compromised a lot of performance, or reliabilty, whichever their problem is.

I can agree to the "likely", but the pessimistic sentiment kind of annoys me. We don't 'know' anything for sure, they did not communicate about it. Sure there are all the PR talks about size zero. But linking the one to the other is guessing, it might as well not be related. MCL and Honda went for the size zero together, they designed the concept together. I cannot believe MCL forced that on Honda and Honda just obeyed. Look at Renault, they had reliability problems as well, but nobody is saying it is because of packaging requirements.

[DiogoBrand]

I'm not saying I know what are Honda's problems and what aren't they, I'm just saying it is very likely that the order from McLaren for a "size zero" PU has compromised a lot of performance, or reliabilty, whichever their problem is.

I can agree to the "likely", but the pessimistic sentiment kind of annoys me. We don't 'know' anything for sure, they did not communicate about it. Sure there are all the PR talks about size zero. But linking the one to the other is guessing, it might as well not be related. MCL and Honda went for the size zero together, they designed the concept together. I cannot believe MCL forced that on Honda and Honda just obeyed. Look at Renault, they had reliability problems as well, but nobody is saying it is because of packaging requirements.

Cooling and packaging isn't as much to blame on Renault's side because their teams don't have nearly as extreme solutions as McLaren.
Even Mercedes, with a lot of time and money invested in development can't afford such an extreme packaging on their cars, Ferrari, maybe having less time and/or money put on their development are reaching Mercedes performance wise, but sacrificing packaging. Renault is very similar to Mercedes packaging wise, but maybe having invested less time and/or money in development, is having reliability issues.
Then comes Honda, with less time, and probably less money than Mercedes put on development, and thinks they can achieve competitive performance with the most radical packaging on the grid, while on the same time using what is supposed to be a brand new chassis. Sometimes these radical ideas result in marvels, a lot of times in big disappointments, wich is clearly the case this season.
Maybe for the next seasons McLaren Honda will become competitive, but in my vision one of two things will happen: they're either gonna compromise packaging to improve reliability, or by the time they become competitive everyone else will have reached the same packaging levels as they have now.
Please don't take this as me saying Honda should copy Mercedes, everyone knows that if you follow someone's footsteps you'll likely end up behind them, but over the years there's lots of cars that were successful due to engine performance and reliability, but none comes to mind that has been competitive for having a small engine compartment.

[Jef Patat]

You didn't get my point. I said there is no evidence to link packaging to engine performance. It might as well not be related. We cannot say.

It is not because Renault cars do not have size zero PR talks that Renault was not having issues because of packaging. Again, we cannot say. Remember the previous years with the Newey God and his brilliant tight packaging. They even had to make holes in the sidepods to cool things down. So I wouldn't say that the Renault isn't tightly packaged. Maybe the Renault just takes more place than the Honda.

Honda has been out of the sport for a couple of years. They do not have the same experience as the other engine manufacturers and also the ERS part in F1 is new to them. Remember preseason testing? The broken seal thing and MCL helping them out to be able to run. Or is the broken seal also indirectly caused by the packaging?

And when you start talking about budgets you're off into oblivion. Nobody knows about that, and nobody knows how efficient they are used.

Unless there comes inside information that one is linked to the other it's nothing more than mass hysteria and has nothing to do with reality. (That is at this moment)

[ringo]

To be fair to Benson, no one here can disprove him.
The Mclaren chassis may very well be better than the Ferrari's. No one here has any real numbers or data to say otherwise.
And looking on the car through the corners i really dont see it as a bad car. It has very good balance.
The ferrari moves like a very good chassis as well, however i think it's anyone's guess which is the better chassis.

Only the cars such as the lotus can we really say have a bad chassis currently. They didn't do so well in the canada race as expected with the engine upgrade. Williams made better use of the Merc engine.

[Mesteño]

There will be short nose in Austria
https://twitter.com/AlbertFabrega/statu ... 0619009025

[mikeerfol]

And it's official!
https://twitter.com/McLarenF1/status/609483047776460800

[Mesteño]

Wonder how will they adapt the paint scheme of the nose.

[Thunder]

Now that's new, an official confirmation on a rumoured Update. =D>

[CjC]

The nose box? They have a new box to carry the nose in?

[Samraj_official]

maybe something invisible to the eye? inside the nose?

[ChrisM40]

I assume that's the crash structure, namely the nose itself, not the entire front end. They dont need to test the front wing itself do they?