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Kinda funny how last years top 4 just swapped cars
Red Bull got a 21 Mercedes - high Power, low drag, title contender
Ferrari = 21 Red Bull , high downforce , good cornering, Title contender
Mercedes = 21 McLaren , Good high Speed cornering and straight line speed , occasional podium
McLaren = 21 Ferrari Good low speed cornering , high drag , lacking top end speed, occasional podium
Solid FP1, both Lando and Daniel seemed comfortable from the green light to start building up speed,… A few minutes until FP2, let’s hope that there is more time to be found and confidence build by both of them.
Very interesting briefing for Monaco from McLaren, a few interesting nuggets of information:
Agenda
1 | Street circuit
We’ll do the usual street track thing of making the car quite compliant and nice to drive initially, then gradually build in performance. We get a first read from our simulations and then, given how green the track is likely to be, we’ll set-up on the conservative side of that, then start pushing the stiffnesses up to find-out where the limit is.
2 | Set-up
We’ll be taking a pragmatic approach to configuring the cars. This will mean running older-spec components – front wings, for example – on Friday, to ensure we have the new ones and spares available for qualifying and the race.
At the front of the car, the limitation is how much you are going to wear the skids over the course of the race, dropping the car as much as you can in compliance with that. It’s also a question of having good braking confidence. What you don’t want is the front so low that the car just crashes into the ground under braking.
The rear end is more about global load, and it is the priority for Friday. It’s limited by three factors: skid wear at the rear of the car; any contact with the side of the floor in high-speed corners (the Tunnel could be a limitation there this weekend) and, finally, any porpoising you need to raise the car out of.
3 | Managing porpoising
With our Barcelona update, we have a little more downforce and thus a little more porpoising to deal with. It is something that needs to be carefully studied in Monaco, where the bumpy surface certainly won’t help the problem. You need to find the limit and then not be too aggressive with it.
Turn Three [Massenet] or Turn 12 [Tabac] could conceivably be problematic corners for porpoising, and potentially quite painful, given the inconsistency it introduces. It's not inconceivable your drivers may end-up porpoising into a wall the first time, and then they'll have to back off to make sure that they don't risk the car.
It isn’t something you can get rid of entirely: the car is quicker the lower you can run it – but it introduces this inconsistency you just have to live with as best you can.
4 | Tyres
The other thing we’ll want to look at is tyre behaviour. We’ve got Pirelli’s three softest compounds for the first time this year – though each of the individual compounds has been used before. The C5 isn’t quite as big a step from the C4 as was the case last year – but otherwise the tyres this year have been reasonably ‘normal’.
We’ll want to know what the tyre warm-up is like. Historically, warm-up is problematic in Monaco, with drivers often having to do a warm-up lap before a timed lap. This year, we have lower blanket temperatures, which may exacerbate the issue. We’ll need to understand the best way to prepare the tyres for a timed lap before the vital quali session.
While there is a strong qualifying-bias here. We’ll want tyre information for the race also – particularly given the free choice of starting tyre for everyone this year, which introduces more variables. We’ll want to know if the tyres are going to grain or blister – though probably more likely graining with the temperatures we're expecting.
Briefing complete. Time for Lando and Daniel to head out onto the track so that we can collect some data and put our hard work to the test.
Number 1 thing now Is to check both sides of the gearbox before sending him out again
Yes, definitely.
Lando has also kissed the wall, so despite the speed the car is still on edge. Still looks promising, look to be racing Mercedes for P5/6 this weekend so far.
