2023 - McLaren Formula 1 Team

[ort895]

What can Gil de Ferran give to a McLaren car, another stupid waste of money.

"We thought that as part of this process it would be really useful to have a further expansion of our capacity especially on some specific projects we want to look into."

It is just an advisory role to compliment their recruitment drive and overall technical team overhaul, I like it.

"I want to have a 360-degree look at where are all the opportunities, because we are ambitious in creating a very strong team. And in order to do that, with a team principal travelling to races for instance, it would be ambitious to think you can cover enough of what's required, so we wanted to expand our capacity."

[Stig14]

We are terrible. Going to be another tough year. Don't know why I've bothered to even watch the highlights. There is zero things interesting about F1 nowadays.

Then don't watch it. Why post that here? It adds absolutely nothing to the conversation.

You add nothing either, no one does. I've been on here a hell of a lot longer than you kid. I've been watching F1 a hell of a lot longer too. I'm a McLaren supporter in the wider sense, not just F1 and will have my opinion. You're so new you don't know what forums are for I don't watch it, I watch the highlights sometimes. Getting less and less as McLaren fall back and everything else gets even more dull with a hypocrite childish driver at the front. I'll watch some more highlights later in the year if I feel like it. Imagine anyone paying to watch this crap

Kid? Really? Patronising much.

I personally use these forums to gain greater insight into an F1 weekend and understand better what's going on (be it bits of news I might missed, technical details of the car or some telemetry insights). Facebook/reddit is the place for mindless complaining and overreactions in my experience but, as others have pointed out, these forums are going down that way too.

[mwillems]

I don't even think we were that bad on the straights relative to every car other than the Red Bull, it was weirdly in 1 or 2 corners we lost everything

Ham: Turn 16 and 17 +0.5
Per: Turn 17 +0.5 (we were within 0.25 of Perez before the last corner... and he went P3)
Sai: Turn 11 and 17 +0.6
Lec Turn 11 and 17 +0.5

We lost the entirety of the lap time in one or two corners...

Lando Q1 P16 vs Sainz Q1 P2 -0.708

Lando loses nearly half a second in T11

https://ibb.co/WfZv3DT

I'll try and post the Norris vs Ham telemetry in a minute, but as as soon as we were out of S1 we were slower than the Mercedes everywhere apart from the corner exit.

They were faster than us very soon after exit, which is a speed issue.

And the Merc has too much drag too, that's how slow we were here.

It could be that we also treat our tyres badly, they are very fickle this year, but if so its a problem with the car that needs fixing.

If we are losing speed right after exit, it isn’t a drag issue… Drag negative impact starts at roughly 250km/h

I used the term "speed issue" in terms of that corner exit for that reason, but it isn't immediate traction as we have decent immediate exit from the corner. After that it is something else, possibly the tyres not working well for us, hard to tell really, but for whatever reason we are getting mugged very quickly. I did notice in the car thread, perhaps errantly, that we seem to have a fair amount of Camber.

The second comment about drag was in relation to the fact that we are mugged on every straight by a car that itself has drag issues.

Re you sure though that drag doesn't affect these cars till 250kph...?

[Xero]

Re you sure though that drag doesn't affect these cars till 250kph...?

Not entirely true, but I get your point that it only becomes a real issue at higher speeds. Drag is proportional to velocity squared.

[AR3-GP]

Re you sure though that drag doesn't affect these cars till 250kph...?

Not entirely true, but I get your point that it only becomes a real issue at higher speeds. Drag is proportional to velocity squared.

and if you ever hope to overtake anyone, regardless of the circuit. Overtaking is even harder on those lower speed circuits as you need more margin to pull it off.

[mwillems]

Re you sure though that drag doesn't affect these cars till 250kph...?

Not entirely true, but I get your point that it only becomes a real issue at higher speeds. Drag is proportional to velocity squared.

Yes it's certainly not the reason for accelerating away, that is something tp do with mechanical forces. Suspension setup, gears etc although with so many gears in the cars it is unlikely to be an issue.

I'd read before that drag doesn't actually reduce lap time by as big an amount as some think. But now I'm curious to understand when drag does become visible in two identical F1 cars who's only difference is wing size.

Where would one start to noticeably pull away in a drag race. I'd love to see that.

[SmallSoldier]

Re you sure though that drag doesn't affect these cars till 250kph...?

Not entirely true, but I get your point that it only becomes a real issue at higher speeds. Drag is proportional to velocity squared.

Yes it's certainly not the reason for accelerating away, that is something tp do with mechanical forces. Suspension setup, gears etc although with so many gears in the cars it is unlikely to be an issue.

I'd read before that drag doesn't actually reduce lap time by as big an amount as some think. But now I'm curious to understand when drag does become visible in two identical F1 cars who's only difference is wing size.

Where would one start to noticeably pull away in a drag race. I'd love to see that.

My understanding is that it becomes noticeable at around 250km/h, it doesn’t influences it as much below that point and starts making a difference from that point onwards.

That’s why I mentioned that if the gap is created early on an straight is most probably a traction issue… If you look at the telemetry of Hamilton and Norris, in the back straight you will notice that both cars are at 248km/h at the same point of the track, nevertheless by the time they reach 290km/h there is a 2km/h in favor of Mercedes, which is maintained until the end of the straight, this would imply that even if there is a bit more drag in the MCL60, the difference is negligible against the Mercedes and less than 0.1 is loss by McLaren due to top speed drag.

The main straight (longest straight) shows a little bit different picture, both the Mercedes and the McLaren have the same speed all the way to 279km/h… With the gap growing after that point until there is a 5km/h difference… The question is if it’s due to drag or deployment or a combination of both.

But normally, we similar exit speeds and traction, cars won’t see a difference due to drag until 250.

[mwillems]

You can see though in the Delta that we are losing time on the straights and it is significant, only so much is traction. It is from around 250 onwards but we hit thit halfway down the 2nd straight and lose time thereafter.

But I was never suggesting that drag is the issue straight after exiting a corner, even if I said a speed issue rather than talked about traction. It's why I referred to the "immediate"traction, as the immediate exit from the corners is good. Its just that we start to lose ground very soon after that. No suggestion that drag is the cause of that second phase time loss after the corner exit, but we are certainly affected by drag after turns 9 and 10, for instance. Its quite significant.

[SmallSoldier]

You can see though in the Delta that we are losing time on the straights and it is significant, only so much is traction. It is from around 250 onwards but we hit thit halfway down the 2nd straight and lose time thereafter.

But I was never suggesting that drag is the issue straight after exiting a corner, even if I said a speed issue rather than talked about traction. It's why I referred to the "immediate"traction, as the immediate exit from the corners is good. Its just that we start to lose ground very soon after that. No suggestion that drag is the cause of that second phase time loss after the corner exit, but we are certainly affected by drag after turns 9 and 10, for instance. Its quite significant.

How are you measuring the time loss in the straights? Trying to follow your logic behind it.

For me the interesting thing is that for example in Q1, Lando is actually faster than Alonso all the way until the end of the lap, losing his chance to get into Q2 in the last corner.

There is definitely a loss of time in the straights and the car does indeed carry more drag, but the differences in times we saw yesterday weren’t due to it, they lost their chance to make it to Q2 in a couple of corners… I also don’t think that there was a significant amount of loss time in the straight against for example the Alpine’s, losing only 0.07 not even a tenth in the longest straight and arguably faster in the last straight.

[mwillems]

You can see though in the Delta that we are losing time on the straights and it is significant, only so much is traction. It is from around 250 onwards but we hit thit halfway down the 2nd straight and lose time thereafter.

But I was never suggesting that drag is the issue straight after exiting a corner, even if I said a speed issue rather than talked about traction. It's why I referred to the "immediate"traction, as the immediate exit from the corners is good. Its just that we start to lose ground very soon after that. No suggestion that drag is the cause of that second phase time loss after the corner exit, but we are certainly affected by drag after turns 9 and 10, for instance. Its quite significant.

How are you measuring the time loss in the straights? Trying to follow your logic behind it.

For me the interesting thing is that for example in Q1, Lando is actually faster than Alonso all the way until the end of the lap, losing his chance to get into Q2 in the last corner.

There is definitely a loss of time in the straights and the car does indeed carry more drag, but the differences in times we saw yesterday weren’t due to it, they lost their chance to make it to Q2 in a couple of corners… I also don’t think that there was a significant amount of loss time in the straight against for example the Alpine’s, losing only 0.07 not even a tenth in the longest straight and arguably faster in the last straight.

The Delta grows v Hamilton on the straights (Delta overlayed on the speed chart maps where the delta grows relative to a prolonged throttle period and relative to braking and throttle), you can see the time loss, it isn't only the corners. Not saying we aren't losing time in corners, but it's readily clear that we are losing time on the straights.

If you look v Verstappen it's much worse on the straights. Drag isn't the only issue but it sure is a big issue. Nearly .25 seconds v Ham in straights alone.

Do you think that there isn't a drag issue?

[mwillems]

I just took a look. 3 tenths lost on straights. The first straight you are 240kph mid corner so definitely hitting 250+ at both the start and end of the lap. The next straight after turn 8, you are hitting 250 about about 1/6th into the straight, not long after turn 8 itself.
Much the same for the back straight, hitting 250 almost immediately having exited turn 16 at over 150kph.

So if you want to be conservative then of the .545 s loss to Hamilton, 3 tenths were on the straight and 2 tenths were drag (Guesstimate, dropping a conservative amount of time to see no argument that the .2s is indeed impeded by drag)
.
We lose .09 s in the 11-16 section but actually lose more time to Ham at turn 17, losing .15 seconds.

Drag is a little lower time loss than corners, but the twist 11-16 isn't the issue against HAM, turn 17 is. Tractions is also an issue but oddly enough we are quick at the immediate exit of the corner, just not after a second or two. We lose more time on straights than corners, naturally some of that is traction.

Compare to Perez and it is much worse. We lose more time in the corners than the straights, about twice as much time. But if we bolted on maximum wing front and rear to try and get close to downforce (We wouldn't) then we'd still be slower in the corners and you'd see time lost on straights go up significantly because our car has a lot of drag for the downforce. Same goes for the comparison to Hamilton, bolt on more DF to match in the corners and see what happens to the straight line speed.

Drag. Totally inefficient Aero.

[Darth-Piekus]

I believe that what is done is done yesterday. The first 8 places are gonna be captured by Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and Aston Martin. The team's target is to get the last two. Good luck and let's give it our all. Today is what counts.

[mwillems]

You're right, it definately happened yesterday. We were discussing telemetry.

Stunning start from Piastri, helped by Norris' being shunted.

[Darth-Piekus]

Why use Softs when Medium to Hards is the best strategy?

[chrisgr]

Why we were the only started with softs and pitted so early?