McLaren MP4-28 Mercedes

[Pierce89]

Tim...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52XGpW-1SRc[/youtube]

Very interesting indeed. It looks as if they have said sod all to the suspension movements and instead attempted to prioritise getting a consistent contact patch. ??? Because the rideheight surely aint stable in that little video there.

Hmm.. The front tyre contact patch..

I don't understand how you could equate bouncing on the tires to a consistent contact patch. In the vid , both loading and size of the contact patch are fluctuating.

[turbof1]

In terms of getting a clear picture next weekend, does the barcelona circuit have a smooth or rather bumpy surface?

[gixxer_drew]

looks like a mechanical thing....

[krisfx]

IIRC I've noticed the McLaren bouncing around like that quite a bit in the last few years.

It's quite easy to notice at spa, I remember back in 2010 it was porpoising quite badly into the bus stop?

[outer_bongolia]

Button is trying to downplay the upgrades coming to Spain. You can only hope that Macca know what they are doing to the car...

"There's been a lot of talk about the importance of next weekend's upgrades; but, as with every upgrade, they're simply part of the series of continuous improvement that are made across the season," he said. "As always, there'll be elements of it that work, elements that perhaps work in a different way to what we'd anticipated, and elements that don't work, or perhaps require further work. That's life in modern Formula One.

http://en.espnf1.com/mclaren/motorsport ... 07084.html

[GrizzleBoy]

Tim...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52XGpW-1SRc[/youtube]

Very interesting indeed. It looks as if they have said sod all to the suspension movements and instead attempted to prioritise getting a consistent contact patch. ??? Because the rideheight surely aint stable in that little video there.

Hmm.. The front tyre contact patch..

Looks like the car is actually bouncing on the tea tray rather than the tyres.

Under braking the tyres compress and the tea tray hits the ground, then pushes the front of the car back up.

Wasn't one of McLarens problems to do with how much "work"/"erosion" the plank under the tea tray was doing?

[chumma]

2011 Turkey after the long straight slowing into the slow hairpin the front wing looked like it was going to break off

[Pup]

McLaren are losing 25-35 pts of downforce, according to Whitmarsh, via AMuS...

http://translate.google.com/translate?s ... 50211.html

Debt are as always the Pirelli tires. But this time the black rollers are not due to their low durability in focus, but by their deformation as 'auto motor und sport' reports. Due to the softer tires, the tire sidewalls deform more this year, causing turbulence in the air flow. This in turn affects the action of the diffuser, which in turn affects the traction of the MP4-28th

Only for low ground clearance and little travel of the bolide of Jenson Button and Sergio Perez will generate pressure to some extent. "With higher ground clearance we are missing 25 to 35 points output," says team boss Martin Whitmarsh, what about making up ten percent of the output of a well-designed cars. In the three races in Australia McLaren experimented around a lot on the area of ​​the tail to get the issue on the track.

With success, as it seems: "We understand our car and the tires," Whitmarsh insured in Bahrain. "The key is to derive the correct solution. Some of the experiments have brought forward to us, others do not. And some have given us answers as to what the car likes and dislikes. I consider it a good sign that our car on every these changes has responded. "

[trinidefender]

McLaren are losing 25-35 pts of downforce, according to Whitmarsh, via AMuS...

http://translate.google.com/translate?s ... 50211.html

Debt are as always the Pirelli tires. But this time the black rollers are not due to their low durability in focus, but by their deformation as 'auto motor und sport' reports. Due to the softer tires, the tire sidewalls deform more this year, causing turbulence in the air flow. This in turn affects the action of the diffuser, which in turn affects the traction of the MP4-28th

Only for low ground clearance and little travel of the bolide of Jenson Button and Sergio Perez will generate pressure to some extent. "With higher ground clearance we are missing 25 to 35 points output," says team boss Martin Whitmarsh, what about making up ten percent of the output of a well-designed cars. In the three races in Australia McLaren experimented around a lot on the area of ​​the tail to get the issue on the track.

With success, as it seems: "We understand our car and the tires," Whitmarsh insured in Bahrain. "The key is to derive the correct solution. Some of the experiments have brought forward to us, others do not. And some have given us answers as to what the car likes and dislikes. I consider it a good sign that our car on every these changes has responded. "

Ok I think something got lost in translation there. What exactly is "25 to 35 points output?" How many Newton meters of downforce is that which is the real number that should be quoted?

[Pup]

What exactly is "25 to 35 points output?"

About a second per lap.

PL: A point is Formula One code for a hundredth of a fraction of ‘cl’, where ‘cl’ is the downforce coefficient. Physically a Formula One car has a downforce coefficient of let’s say 3 to 3.5. So 30 points would be 30 hundredths which would equate to 0.3. So 30 points might be getting on for 10 percent of the downforce on an F1 car and that could be worth about a second a lap.

[marcush.]

And what about the rumour RedBull is sacrificing available DF these days as it would only destroy the tyres in no time? That 30counts for one second in laptime is a phantom an oversimplification of reality.

total numbers ´/maximums just don´t matter .All that counts is the average ,the area under the curve what matters .If you happen to have more downforce on average than your competitors without losing out too much in the drag department this will add up to the time deltas we see .
This is of course not an exclusive to Mclarens issues

[beelsebob]

And what about the rumour RedBull is sacrificing available DF these days as it would only destroy the tyres in no time? That 30counts for one second in laptime is a phantom an oversimplification of reality.

total numbers ´/maximums just don´t matter .All that counts is the average ,the area under the curve what matters .If you happen to have more downforce on average than your competitors without losing out too much in the drag department this will add up to the time deltas we see .
This is of course not an exclusive to Mclarens issues

Frankly, I think RedBull is using that as a cover. I don't really see any scenario in which it could reasonably be true. What I think they're meaning is "we know a way of generating more downforce using our exhaust solution, but we're designing it in a non-optimal way because the optimal design would overheat the tyres".

[turbof1]

I don't see extra DF destroying the tyres either. Only if you choose to use it lap after lap the extra grip-demand will wear the tyres down, but driver you can choose if you want to use the extra grip, or drive a little bit more careful. Of course that is masking ultimate race pace, but it does requires to take away DF. Not at all.

I do not really believe the exhaust gasses are effectively overheating the tyres. Especially not in the case of Red Bull, who fully guide the exhaust gasses with the ramps. All of the gasses end up between the diffuser and the tyre, none of it on the tyre.

[ringo]

Extra downforce can cause the tyres to degrade faster. There is a relationship with the mechanical properties of the tyre, the rotational speed and time. Degradation is inevitable but a car that is putting more load through the tyres over a period of time will cause them to degrade faster, ie the mechanical properties will degrade.
Redbull's problem may be with how many laps they can get out of the tyre before the mechanical properties break down, balance against how long it takes to do a pitstop.
If a pit stop was 5 seconds long, for argument's sake, i think redbull would crank up the downforce on the car and accept that they can run 2 seconds a lap faster than anyone else for 10 laps instead of 15.

[beelsebob]

Extra downforce can cause the tyres to degrade faster. There is a relationship with the mechanical properties of the tyre, the rotational speed and time. Degradation is inevitable but a car that is putting more load through the tyres over a period of time will cause them to degrade faster, ie the mechanical properties will degrade.

Not true, at least most of the time. In general, more load onto the tyre means more grip on the road, means less sliding, means less degradation. I can see only very limited scope for this causation not to occur.

Redbull's problem may be with how many laps they can get out of the tyre before the mechanical properties break down, balance against how long it takes to do a pitstop.
If a pit stop was 5 seconds long, for argument's sake, i think redbull would crank up the downforce on the car and accept that they can run 2 seconds a lap faster than anyone else for 10 laps instead of 15.

Sure, I just dispute the concept that it's a case of having too much downforce that causes the tyres to degrade that fast. If it were that simple, RedBull wouldn't be getting beaten by other competitors, as they would just be stripping downforce down to the optimal level, and winning.