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[Nando]

Autosprint claims that Mclaren are ready to copy the front pull-rod from Ferrari. (Article in Italian)

I hope this is correct just to see the reaction from a certain member here

[wesley123]

Autosprint claims that Mclaren are ready to copy the front pull-rod from Ferrari. (Article in Italian)

That would come with the step nose then!

[ecapox]

The Autosprint article is for 2013 cars. What is interesting is it says "The McLaren of Hamilton". Not sure if that means only his car, which would seem almost but impossible. They say that the McLaren will be the only car with pullrod all around. The print magazine has more on this topic.

*Note: Autosprint has been guilty of being WAY off in their assumptions...many times. Grain of salt time.

[wesley123]

For 2013 I would definitely not count it out, but for this year I would.

[Ral]

What Lotus 'might', if not DRS related, could have been done years ago. Why are we seeing it now if it so effective?

Brian

Because only now they came with the idea and no one had thought of it before.

No one had thought of connecting a duct to the rear wing to blow air over it and stall it out? I'm not entirely sure I'm convinced by that

And why not? All ideas are obvious once someone has thought of it. McLaren's first F-duct being a point in case, as is the Mercedes front wing staller linked to the DRS.

It's not even just a case of nobody had thought of it either, as obviously in Lotus' case for example they clearly thought it would not be legal so they simply had not pursued anything in that direction.

[Jackles-UK]

For 2013 I would definitely not count it out, but for this year I would.

Agreed.

Ferrari took a bit of time to understand their pull-rods having not used them front or rear until this year but have proven that there are no real downsides once the strengthening has been addressed.

[Owen.C93]

Mclaren do have lots of experienc with F-duct so I don't think it's going to take them that long to have a competitive DDRS in place, certainly not 5 months. They claim to have something in place already.

Most teams developed an F-Duct, I wouldn't say McLaren are that far ahead in that department.

Where by "ahead" you mean "10 weeks behind Lotus"?

Something like that.

Also the story of McLaren looking at pullrod for 2013 is old news.

[Holm86]

Yes wasnt it Lowe who mentioned that McLaren had looked at front pull rod for the 2013 car a couple of month ago??

[wesley123]

Because only now they came with the idea and no one had thought of it before.

No one had thought of connecting a duct to the rear wing to blow air over it and stall it out? I'm not entirely sure I'm convinced by that

Why didnt they run wings or ground effect in the 50ies then? Same scenario; no one had thought of these things at that moment.

[beelsebob]

Because only now they came with the idea and no one had thought of it before.

No one had thought of connecting a duct to the rear wing to blow air over it and stall it out? I'm not entirely sure I'm convinced by that

Why didnt they run wings or ground effect in the 50ies then? Same scenario; no one had thought of these things at that moment.

What I was trying to highlight, apparently unsuccessfully is that McLaren have quite famously run such a system, implying that no one had thought of it before is truely madness. To suggest that McLaren, who invented the f-duct wouldn't have seen merc's system and then thought "hey, can we exploit anything to get an f-duct or similar for either front/rear wing, either passive/active" is pretty nuts. Hence, the development time on any part that does anything similar to Merc's or Lotus's system is likely to have been significantly longer than the ~10 weeks between seeing lotus' system and spa.

[hardingfv32]

If the Lotus system has nothing to do with the DRS system, then it seems odd that the Lotus system was just thought of recently. It sounds like a reasonable option to the McLaren F-duct. Every team was looking for a McLaren F-Duct option at the time. That would have been a lot of minds trying to come up with alternate solution. It was a significant design goal at the time.

Brian

[Jackles-UK]

Remember that it's only this year that such a system has been needed or useful.

Up until 2010 you could have had a fully fledged 'original style' F-Duct system and during 2011 the performance gain is likely to have been miniscule in comparison to perfecting an EBD so it made sense for teams to look at that rather than pursuing a second 'silver bullet' so to speak.

[Nando]

Martin Whitmarsh sent me a sketch on the rumored "D-DRS"
This is not gonna end well...

http://www.cadred.org/Images/Gallery/Or ... troll4.jpg

[MikeFromCanada]

I'm not so sure a DDRS will be on the car so soon if at all. I'm not entirely sure they'd need it.

McLaren haven't ever really been found wanting in terms of top level speed (Canada a few years back they brought the wrong 7th gear but thats about all) and in recent years have gone a slightly different way in their setups at low downforce tracks, running slightly higher downforce than the rest of the track and relying on the extra power the Merc engine appears to offer over the Renault/Ferrari units that power their rivals. Jenson putting it on the front row around Monza with what looked like a parachute of a rear wing in 2010 for example.

Not that it wouldn't give them any benefit at all, but surely it would be better to focus on improving areas of weakness rather than improving on areas they are already fairly strong in comparison?

To be fair, the superior drag reduction of the F-Duct system on the McLaren did more to allow for this rather than the Mercedes engine.

[Jackles-UK]

While the McLaren clearly had the best F-Duct system, by the time they got to Monza (Race 14) pretty much every top team had their own iteration it installed. The difference can't have been that enormous between the different systems by that time in the season surely?

Back to the -27: Does anybody know if there was any modification in the 'big' updates over the last few weeks to the floor? I thought today that with their original floor being deemed illegal (sort of!) in China they might have re-engineered it to try to obtain the same effect with the new rules.