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Ron Dennis & Martin Whitmarsh said that Bahrain would be different than the last two races, and for a moment I believe them cos McLaren performance in free practice shows an improvement. But when on Sunday Kimi blew his engine & DC has an engine failure, I really cant see a top class team in McLaren anymore.. So, the answer is NO, McLaren Mercedes will struggle this season. Sorry...
I think McLaren's Strategy in designing the 19 has been quite negative. Why design an engine that can be changed easily. In case of a crash? That's not the right way to go about things. I mean any team should work on the assumption that if the car is good enough then the drivers won't have to push harder than required to be competetive (and that itself will avoid crashes barring stupid drivers which cannot be said of either Kimi or David). When you design a can on the assumption that someone is going to crash it and thus give importance to the details / permutations once that happens, that means you are just losing time on actually designing a good car. If this goes on much longer its going to be disastrous. I mean right now McLaren is just wasting Kimi's time, could say even his life. I wouldn't blame Kimi if he signs another deal in the next few months, its his right. And about performance bonuses, that's rubbish because if the car doesn't finish due to some defect then McLaren is losing a lot of Kimi's money not to mention their own performance payout at the end of the season. I say all the above stuff though I am a devoted McLaren fan and hope they get better ASAP.
It is amazing how Mercedes managed to get back to bad after recovering from big problems since 2001.
They discovered in 2001 that under the new rules that a 72-degree engine was not effective anymore. And they had to change to a 90-degree engine in 2002 that on its debut year was unrealiable and well under power.
At fall 2002 Mclaren decided to split the team into 2, as well as Mercedes., One team was going to update the MP4/17 and the FO110M whereas another would build a new car the MP4/18 and a new engine the FO110N.
This engine has never been even put into a car. The N engine is the one that was intended to produce 930bhp@19,700 rpms. But this project failed and they had to change it to a new project the FO110P, that had several problems onboard the MP4/18.
But going back to the FO110M engine, this was an amazing one, because after 2 years it was an almost match for the BMW P83 as it could be seen at Monza, Indy and Suzuka 2003. If that base had been followed, we could have had an amazingly different 2004 season for Mclaren.
So as you can see, Mercedes managed to climb a huge mountain and all of a sudden has fallen again.
I don´t see anything godd for Mclaren in the near future. Only major changes on the suspensions systems, aerodynamics and on the engine integration and ower are going to bringe them back to the top.
"I only race to finisht first, because the second is the first looser" Ayrton Senna
this is probably a biased outlook on things but bear with me. A) we all agree that nothing short of a miracle will allow mclaren to win the championship this year. B) Ron Dennis said that the race in bahrain would be different but on the outside it wasnt. look at the practices though and they where right up there. also in nine laps kimi came from the back to tenth , he wouldn't have won the race but he was well on his way to points. so although the outcome of the race was the same McLaren did improve, and if they can get their engines to last they shouldn't be far behind the likes of williams.
Anonymous wrote:does anyone out there honestly believe mclaren can get back on their feet this season and at least battle for podium instead for some measly points with saubers and jaguars its humiliating for the team...and very sad for their fans...i honestly hope they can get regular podiums soon
I don't mind the fall of McLaren one bit. They were the cause of Honda having to leave F1 in the first place. They had some exclusive contract with Honda for 10 years where Honda couldn't supply another team. The V12 that Honda produced was a project that didn't do so well, with the likes of the Renault powerplant that was starting to dominate, so they opted to go with Ford power and leave Honda in the cold. So I say phuck McLaren and I hope they do fall to like 9th in the constructor's championship this year. It is time for other teams to come up anyways, BAR and Renault are the teams. Maybe Toyboat will be a decent team in the next few years, that is if the powers that be back in Japan decide that this marketing ploy just isn't working to sell more vehicles afterall.
It seems to me that Mclaren have tried to do far too much too soon with both the MP4-18A and the MP4-19. Ever since the fiasco over the use of beryllium in the construction of the engine Mercedes have fallen behind Ferrari (and more recently BMW). Since then they have done a good job climbing back up the ladder. In 2002 the 90degree engine had far too much vibration and was under powered. The MP4-17 was as slow as ever and things weren't looking up. However a steady, progressive development plan managed to solve many of these issues. and the MP4-17D was good enough for Kimi to secure 2nd in the Championship...In a year old car. Very impressive. The major problem was that Ferrai where only going to improve. So a radical car was needed to leapfrog them. Enter the MP4-18A...or so we thought. It seems they tryed to do too much with the 18. Vibration problems, cooling problems, and problems with the packaging and overall integration of the chassis and engine plagued the car (not to mention failing the FIA crash tests multiple times), after improving the 17 so much why not continue with a STEADY development plan? It worked for the 17. They had so many problems with the 18A the MP4-19 was meant to be the car that the 18 never was. Problem1: 17D not quite good enough Problem2: 18A has too many problems, Problem3: 19 has the task of solving problems with 18 (a feat on its own) AND improving on the pace of the 17D. the MP4-19 was, i'm afraid to say, bound for disaster. Mclaren have got to realise that they cannot climb everest in a day. And if they don't start realising this soon JPM's career could be down the can in 2005 (he joins the Maccers in '05).
The current Mercedes engine is designated the F110Q (Acording to the McLaren Websight) The MP4-18 has an F110P engine (Again according to the websight). If the MP4-17D had an F110M engine then was the N engine you refered to destined to go into the MP4-17D or the MP4-18? You said it was a failed program, it seems likly then that Mercedes resorce was split between the M engine and the N engine (and possibly even the P engine). This might go some way to explaining how Merc have got so left behind?
They seem to have produced four engines in two and a half years.
Power of Dreams wrote: The V12 that Honda produced was a project that didn't do so well, with the likes of the Renault powerplant that was starting to dominate, so they opted to go with Ford power and leave Honda in the cold. So I say phuck McLaren and I hope they do fall to like 9th in the constructor's championship this year.
Chris
McLaren left Honda?! Everything I've read indicated that Honda decided to leave and it was McLaren that was left out in the cold.
McLaren-Mercedes have shot theirselves on the foot. They got scrambled in their development strategy & program & really REALLY they've got ONLY themselves to blame...
Location: Covilhã, Portugal (and sometimes in Évora)
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Same here guest, everything I read indicated that Honda left Mclaren. One article even pointed out that Honda signed a deal with Mclaren stating that they wouldn't enter F1 for X (don't know the number) years and if they did they would have to pay Mclaren, besides this Honda had to pay Mclaren for breaking the contract......
Well...I don't know if everything I said is correct this is more or less the summary of all the things I read, but some of them aren't very "trusty" especially yhe last part of the paying Mclaren and the deal....I've only read this once, and haven't found any other articles refering this....so it might or isn't true.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't care of JPM one bit. He's rude, unsportsmanlike and full of hype that really doesn't mean much. However I will admit that he is very fast, if somewhat inconsistent and I was looking forward to he and Raikonnen testing their mettle, both mentally and on the track. Maybe I was hoping to recreate some of the fight and drama of the Prost/Senna days. But if Mac doesn't improve drastically by the end of the year it's not going be very exciting watching the silver cars fight with jordan and minardi for 14th place.
"I'll bring us through this. As always. I'll carry you - kicking and screaming - and in the end you'll thank me. "
Location: Covilhã, Portugal (and sometimes in Évora)
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Well sometimes the Technical Director job isn't what it seems, a few years ago the technical director was the man in charge of the design of the car, nowadays the tech director is more a manager between the aero, mech and electronics guys he serves as an intermediate and tries to coordinate things in a way that all the aspects of the car end up working in harmony (something about this was written in F1 Racing in the last year or 2).
So the problem might not be totally Adrians fault, as a supervisor he there are details that he doesn't see....specially mechanicly, cause he'se more the aero guy. If you pay attention to Mclarens problems it's not aero problems it's basicly mechanical problems, engine/chassis adaptation and gearbox construction problems due to the use of 3 diferente materials in it....and mechanics is down do (Oatley and Cuningham).
I agree with you in most of the things Monstro, except in the aero side.
Mclaren also has aero problems, mainly in the front of the car (lack of downforce). The main problem is the engine; underpowered, unreliable and with bad integration in the chassis... The gearbox is also a big problem (too fragile). It seems to me that Mclaren, insted of keeping a steady development of the Mp4-17 like Ferrari did with the F2002 (I know, the F2002 was better that the Mp4-17...) tried to make a big step (that was too big...). I just don't understand one thing: if they knew that the Mp4-18 have so many problems, then why they go on with it (I mean, the Mp4-19 it's very similar to the Mp4-18).
