2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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Alonso Fan
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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It looks like sky is behind a little with their articles but I'll post it here anyway incase Boullier mentioned anything new

From sky sports f1:
McLaren have pinpointed next month's Spanish GP as the race where they will start to form a clearer judgement on their 2018 car.

In points terms, McLaren have made their best start to a season since 2014 and sit fourth in the Constructors' Championship, but their MCL33 has struggled in qualifying with the team one of only three teams yet to reach Q3 at any round so far.

A late switch to Renault engines for 2018 was followed by reliability problems with the new car in winter testing and McLaren have admitted their upgrade schedule is behind schedule.

They now expect their biggest upgrade package to arrive in time for the Spanish GP next month.

"We didn't turn up in Australia with the car we wanted because we were delayed for some reasons so a lot of parts and upgrades are on their way to hit the track," said Eric Boullier, McLaren's racing director.

"For logistical reasons it's very likely going to be in Barcelona and from that point we will see performance wise where we are."

McLaren's poor qualifying performance in Bahrain, when they lapped two seconds slower than the pole position pace, prompted what was described as an 'emergency debrief'.

Boullier admits there are no excuses and they need to close the gap to the two teams with the same engine.

"We have the same engine as Renault and Red Bull and we are behind," he said.

"There is no hiding [place], we need to understand why we are slower in qualifying, why we were better in the race and why we are behind the other Renault teams. Full stop.

"There were some questions asked in Bahrain and there is still an ongoing process because we have to address it, we will address it and we're about to address it."

Boullier added: "We all know that Formula 1 is not the easiest sport, so it's difficult, and we are definitely not happy where we are today. We have a lot coming in the pipeline so hopefully it's going to help us catch up a little bit the gap we have."

Is McLaren's car carrying too much drag?
Despite swapping an underperforming Honda engine for Renault's units, McLaren's cars have consistently remained among the slowest cars on the straights at the start of this season - raising questions about the efficiency of their car's aerodynamic package.

Boullier acknowledges the lack of straight-line speed is a problem, but says it is not all about an excessive amount of drag.

"This is obviously one of the issues, our top speed is not the best one because we are bottom of the ranking," he said.

"But it's not the only one, it's not as simple as that. If it was only a question of drag that would be easy to fix. You have to address fundamentally all the aspects of the car to make sure we are where we should be."

But were McLaren ambitious enough?
While the team's development schedule has run behind schedule, Boullier also conceded the team may have not have been ambitious enough with their design targets during the winter.

"The car has matched with the targets so that means maybe the targets were not the right ones. So we need to revise in terms of ambition what we need to achieve," he said.

http://www.skysports.com/amp/f1/news/12 ... -close-gap
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godlameroso
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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JonoNic wrote:
22 Apr 2018, 17:22
Maybe someone should start a thread on the process of building a successful racecar (successful in the first or second season I'm not sure) and where they would go all out to optimise and where they would compromise for now. I bet you there would be many theories coming from that.
I don't think anyone could have any success in year one unless you go the Haas route and buy 60% of the parts on one of the fastest cars on the grid. These cars are so complex that changing the aero concept is essentially starting from scratch, look at Williams and the step backwards they've taken, almost 4 races in and they're still getting to grips with the car let alone have a clear development path. The McLaren doesn't have nearly as high a mountain to climb, it just has to get the cooling in order and the body work to go with it, and then just refine the concepts already on the car to work with the new incoming bodywork. Granted easier said than done, however at least they have a clear direction to work towards.
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techman
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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(They can't use all the PU modes yet)
https://www.f1today.net/nl/nieuws/f1/23 ... catiemodus
quote:" It is true that our factory team, McLaren and Red Bull Racing can use extra power in the qualification."

renault cyril did mention in an article that all the customer teams including mclaren are using the special qualy mode. if there was an issue iam pretty sure Eric would have mentioned it but he didnt becuase its not an issue with the renault engine at all. there is no point blaming the renault engine when the problem is a chassis problem

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diffuser
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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JonoNic wrote:
22 Apr 2018, 17:18
godlameroso wrote:Did they? I don't recall them having any overheating issues or anything like that, almost all of the problems Honda had last year were due to the MGU-H. This year McLaren has admitted themselves that they went too conservative with the cooling. 30% of the drag on these cars go to just the cooling system, so there's big gains in straight line speed once they get that sorted. When I build track cars, I always focus on the cooling system before I even think about aero, because that's the most basic area where you can make big gains.
Oh. So the overheating was with the H. Thanks for clearing that up

From what I remember, the MGU-H had a bearing issue they couldn't resolve. One part of it was engine oil getting into the MGU-H. There was also talk that the materials they were using weren't strong enough and tolerances to large. They got the Honda Jet plane division to help.

Didn't they already resolve the cooling issue? thought that was only in testing.

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carisi2k
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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techman wrote:
23 Apr 2018, 04:01
(They can't use all the PU modes yet)
https://www.f1today.net/nl/nieuws/f1/23 ... catiemodus
quote:" It is true that our factory team, McLaren and Red Bull Racing can use extra power in the qualification."

renault cyril did mention in an article that all the customer teams including mclaren are using the special qualy mode. if there was an issue iam pretty sure Eric would have mentioned it but he didnt becuase its not an issue with the renault engine at all. there is no point blaming the renault engine when the problem is a chassis problem
I think you will find it could be an engine problem but Mclaren can not say so because that same engine in the RB14 is nearly as fast as the Ferrari and Mercedes. In case you didn't see it a Renault turbo went boom in P3 at china in what is clearly the most optimised package of all the Renault powered chassis. Renault still have reliability issues.

I would also encourage you to not listen to anything that cyril says at it tends to be nothing but hot air. If you want to know when there is more power from Renault then you just need to listen to Red Bull team members. The performance of the RB14 vs the W09 and SF71 in qualifying will also tell you if Renault have more power available.

PhillipM
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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Mclaren themselves said they do have a qualifying mode available - but that it wasn't much of a difference and only worth a few horsepower.
Just because Cyril says they have a qualifying mode doesn't mean it's very good, the Honda appeared to have a better boost in qualify mode even last year.

Just going by failures alone it does appear that Red Bull may be using higher power modes, and/or running the engine hotter for gains. But we'll see how that shakes out later in the season.

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adrianjordan
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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I think there are 2 different ways to approach PU usage this year.

Go for maximum power and accept that you're going to get hit with penalties later in the season, which may be what RBR are doing as they want to fight for wins, or run the PU conservatively and hope to get consistent points finishes and maybe pick up some places later in the season when others have penalties.

The latter approach would also means that you have more flexibility if your PU supplier releases an updated PU with more power etc as, if you have already used all of your allocation, then you have to take a penalty to get the improved PU.

I think Mclaren are running their PU conservatively at the moment while they get their car where they want it, which will help them later in the season when Renault, hopefully, brings more power and reliability to the PU's.
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dren
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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Alonso Fan wrote:
22 Apr 2018, 18:06
From sky sports f1:

"The car has matched with the targets so that means maybe the targets were not the right ones. So we need to revise in terms of ambition what we need to achieve," he said.

http://www.skysports.com/amp/f1/news/12 ... -close-gap
I see a management restructuring in the future.
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techman
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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mclaren definetlywant to qualify higher because it will make it harder for them on sundays if they qualify lower that top 10 and they are running pu aggressively. but however the pace is not in the car. they have admited they cant understand why there is no pace. if they were running the pu conservatively then eric would have mentioned it 100 times by now but he didnt but he clearly says there is a drag issue here and they working to fix it with their spain update.

PhillipM
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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Everyone knew it would have too much drag even over winter - they already said they'd gone very conservative on cooling, etc
. That's not really an issue at all as it would have been already factored into the update cycles, that's why Eric said it's not as simple as taking drag off the car, it's not wing levels, etc, it's inherent until they start to optimise things around the engine data - it's also why they're not that concerned about it.

zeph
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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Can any of our Spanish-speaking friends here help translate this? Supposedly says Alonso will be replaced by Norris at the end of the season.

https://www.diariogol.com/motor/fernand ... 3_102.html

Google translate not nailing this. Is it just clickbait or what?

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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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zeph wrote:
23 Apr 2018, 18:33
Can any of our Spanish-speaking friends here help translate this? Supposedly says Alonso will be replaced by Norris at the end of the season.

https://www.diariogol.com/motor/fernand ... 3_102.html

Google translate not nailing this. Is it just clickbait or what?
It's click bait. It appeared on the Racefans round up a couple of days ago. People in the comments said its an extremely unreliable source
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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zeph wrote:
23 Apr 2018, 18:33
Can any of our Spanish-speaking friends here help translate this? Supposedly says Alonso will be replaced by Norris at the end of the season.

https://www.diariogol.com/motor/fernand ... 3_102.html

Google translate not nailing this. Is it just clickbait or what?
Nothing trustable can come from that source, but basically it says that McLaren has already decided to keep Vandoorne, release Alonso due to his very high salary, and let Norris drive next year. Meanwhile, they want "experienced" Alonso to further develop the car and then let him go. Vandoorne would then feel pressed by the upcoming Norris, who has not been in the spotlight as much as Vandoorne was, but is the new Lewis. Actually better than Lewis.

Oh!.. and, of course, that's already fixed and decided.

And that's already about 80 words more than the news is worth ( actually the newspaper is worth)

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godlameroso
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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Does he make a full circle to the factory Renault team?
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RonDennis
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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zeph wrote:
23 Apr 2018, 18:33
Can any of our Spanish-speaking friends here help translate this? Supposedly says Alonso will be replaced by Norris at the end of the season.

https://www.diariogol.com/motor/fernand ... 3_102.html

Google translate not nailing this. Is it just clickbait or what?
We've done four races, what do you think? :lol:

From year 1 we've been hearing that Alonso is going to leave McLaren. Nobody else wants him, so if he wants to stay in F1, he's gonna stay with McLaren. It's as simple as that.