This forum contains threads to discuss teams themselves. Anything not technical about the cars, including restructuring, performances etc belongs here.
I think Oscar was stuck in traffic for a lot of the second stint which may have skewed the data?
Some laps towards the end yes, but honestly, even matching Russell is still good for Oscar because he was on the C1 for the 2nd stint whereas Russell was on the C2.
Also, Russell had 4 degree cooler track temps, which is not some crazy difference, but it does help with the tires somewhat.
I am not as happy as I could be because the car did not respond how we wanted at times, but it is going in the right direction, just maybe the magnitude of the direction was not as big as we expected and it’s something we need to work on for the first race and future development
A bit annoyed because the API I used for my app had some issues with fetching data during testing. I opened an issue in github to report it and the developer finally pushed a PR now to fix the problem while backporting the data too, so all the data is there to analyze.
Oscar's long run was quite decent, but Mercedes seemed closer today with the higher temps :
Lando was an absolute monster yesterday though, until proven otherwise, it should be considered an outlier :
Oscar’s middle stint was on a compound harder than George’s. So then it’s pretty linear 0.5/0.6s. Engine modes and exact fuel loads of course are a total unknown but it sure looks good. I’m relieved the deg isn’t out of control.
Slow speed cornering speed is up but medium speed and up doesn’t seem too compromised. Very nice
This is a setup limitation which can be dialed in by compromising the front end a bit. Playing around with diff settings could also help keep the rear under control under off-throttle turn-in. In the morning the car did not look good when pushed.
I think I pointed this out already, but not sure if they were testing some sort of extreme setups with Lando on the more "representative" weather conditions, because Lando had a lot of "medium-length" runs inbetween trips to the pits.
On the long-runs it's almost never as bad somehow. If it's a case of a car not having enough rear to deal with the front, then it would show up in the form of really bad rear-tire degradation on a longer-stint, but that obviously wasn't the case with either driver.
Also, Andrea did say that they improved over their weaknesses without sacrificing their strengths and they were happy with what they were seeing from the car on track. But yes, the floaty rear-end on "push" laps, particularly this morning, is not great by any means. Something to iron out until Melbourne. Maybe that mega front-end would need to be tamed down a bit, because there's not enough rear grip to cope with it under certain conditions.
Bahrain looks extremely positive for Mclaren. Its a rear limited circuit, with a mclaren that has a massive front end. I probably shouldnt, but i feel extremely positive heading to a first race front limited circuit
Stella suggests the rear need work to mitigate the traction issues but that it has improved, as has the nose through the mid speeds, which was what he referred to previously about fixing an issue without hurting the mid speed. Though I think they have improved the front graining issue too, and hopefully front issues in cold or wet.
Front just looks to be stronger than the rear right now. Rear can be improved from setup alone and once the rear is as good as can be, then they may need to dial town the front a bit to balance it. But I'm sure there is more to come from the rear yet.
As both the video and that summary suggest, the nose is almost at times too strong now, but that bodes well for front limited tracks, obviously. So if we've looked alright here, we stand to look better elsewhere. Cold weather makes things more rear limited, hence the issues becoming more apparent. At this point I'm not sure if our rear is any worse than anyone else or if they were just trying to find a setup that got the rear working with a strong nose, without sacrificing any of the grip at the front.
But what they've done to the front of the car is a very big step.
The boys won't have just been doing laps yesterday, but trying a lot of in car settings during the race run to see how it makes the car work, hence it looks like they were wrestling the rear round in long runs, but really they'd have been working super hard in the cockpit to see what works. We should be thankful for those tricky conditions because it gave us an opportunity to see the rear at its worst and to try to address it.
Obviously you can dial down the front, but doing this in certain situations may bring back the graining and front deg issues, so the priority has to be to try and get the rear to work a bit better, independently of other areas of the car, you don't want to lose that front if you can help it, although there will be some situations where it isn't necessary.
Australia is a mix of front and rear limited corners and its a track we traditionally like, so there's time for learning and still getting some good results. Looking forward to seeing the car through 9 and 10!!!
Friday's conditions and track configuration offered us what I think is a view of the car facing many of its demons, and it was Reasonably good.
