2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

[Lucky]

[media]https://twitter.com/SmilexTech/status/9 ... 10464?s=19 [/media]

[Vasconia]

https://www.sport.de/news/ne3175231/qua ... ro-update/

Updates in Monaco, Canada and Silverstone according to EB.

What about the expected big update in Barcelona?

McLaren is traditionally a team which brings new pieces in almost every race but the big ones is the one which matter if they want to close the big gap.

[Macklaren]

It just shows how far Vandoorne is from Alonso in ability. He is not going to keep his seat next year if this continues.

Alonso shines specially when the car is not perfect. On a perfect car he’s just one of the (very) top drivers. When things aren’t perfect, setup is off the sweet spot or there’s a need to adapt to the unforeseen then he is unique, me thinks. He’s so fast reading car conditions and adapting his style to them.

I totally agree with you, key word, adapt. Be it to tyres, fuel saving, under/oversteer, he seems to be able to get the best out of a package. A good example is how quickly he adapted to indycar. I heard he set the fastest time at Spa yesterday as well. Hats of to the guy.
But that said, I still think Stoffel will come good. I've pointed out before that he brings the car home, doesn't do silly things, spin out, crash or take people out. His strong point in his career is finding the grip level, with F1, it affects his driving style. But he's a good driver. Just needs more time than I guess we thought he would.

Stoff reminds me of Bottas. Quietly goes about his business in a highly competent way without the flamboyance of his teammate. While being friendlier than RAI. He's also been closer to ALO this season.

[Macklaren]

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/rena ... l-1033492/

Another nice boost...

[nirvaand]

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/rena ... l-1033492/

Another nice boost...

Could be worth at least a tenth or two a lap. This might be enough for McLaren to make it through to Q3 at a track like Spain. But we'll have to wait and see if the performance is indeed that big. (Last year Red Bull got a fuel update from Exxon and said it was worth at least a grid slot - a few tenths I would guess, considering their gap to Merc and Ferrari in quali. Assuming the tight midfield this year, this update from BP might be worth a few grid slots for McLaren.)

A quote from last year: "ExxonMobil global motorsport technology manager David Tsurusaki explained that he feels the latest fuel is providing at least a 0.5% horsepower improvement for Red Bull."

If BP brings that sort of improvement, it will be quiet significant.

Also, Renault isn't bringing a significant aero update to Spain, so if the updates work well, McLaren have a chance of jumping Renault, but all hypothetical hopes obviously.

Updates for McLaren in Spain are expected to be worth between 0.5 to 0.9 seconds a lap, depending on which source you look at.

[PhillipM]

Provided they work immediately and don't need to find a setup that will work with the new aero....

[BrunoH]

yap, i dont belive in magical 1 second updates. A full real 1 second is give and take a years development give and take.

if they make 0.5 second improvement that will already be huge.

however the competition is also updating, so if they make in real terms 0..250 to 0.3 seconds above the competition its already a huge step forward.

[Ground Effect]

Does anybody remember how much Red Bull gained with their Barcelona updates last season? I believe it was fairly substantial, more than 0.5secs. I hope the updates will be in the territory of the RB13 Barcelona jump.

[nirvaand]

Does anybody remember how much Red Bull gained with their Barcelona updates last season? I believe it was fairly substantial, more than 0.5secs. I hope the updates will be in the territory of the RB13 Barcelona jump.

Red Bull brought major updates at Spain and Singapore respectively as far as I remember. They also brought updates to Hungary, but it wasn't as big as the ones brought to Spain and Singapore.

I ran the difference in qualifying between pole position and the highest placed Red Bull. Here is what I got:

Average difference to pole lap before Spain: 1.420%

Average difference to pole lap after Spain and before Singapore: 0.989% (excluded Monza quali because of rain)

Average difference to pole lap after Singapore: 0.678%

So they closed the gap by 0.45% in Spain, which would translate to approximately 4 tenths at Spain. And then they saw a further 0.30% gain in Singapore. But Red Bull was having correlation issues, which obviously hampered their performance before Spain.

[diffuser]

https://www.sport.de/news/ne3175231/qua ... ro-update/

Updates in Monaco, Canada and Silverstone according to EB.

What about the expected big update in Barcelona?

McLaren is traditionally a team which brings new pieces in almost every race but the big ones is the one which matter if they want to close the big gap.

I guess you didn't read the article or the forum for that matter.

[godlameroso]

yap, i dont belive in magical 1 second updates. A full real 1 second is give and take a years development give and take.

if they make 0.5 second improvement that will already be huge.

however the competition is also updating, so if they make in real terms 0..250 to 0.3 seconds above the competition its already a huge step forward.

Most cars improve by 1.5 seconds over the winter. Last year both Renault, Red Bull, and FI made gains of over a second mid season when they revamped their packages. So it's not impossible for McLaren to take a similar step.

I say the Spain update is worth .6 immediately but the others gain .3 so they make up .3 relative to the leaders. This would put them under a second off the top race pace. But another .6 is dormant until France or Silverstone. Then we would see the true McLaren 2018 car. This would put them half a second off the top in race pace, enough for Alonso to do his thing.

[nirvaand]

yap, i dont belive in magical 1 second updates. A full real 1 second is give and take a years development give and take.

if they make 0.5 second improvement that will already be huge.

however the competition is also updating, so if they make in real terms 0..250 to 0.3 seconds above the competition its already a huge step forward.

Most cars improve by 1.5 seconds over the winter. Last year both Renault, Red Bull, and FI made gains of over a second mid season when they revamped their packages. So it's not impossible for McLaren to take a similar step.

I say the Spain update is worth .6 immediately but the others gain .3 so they make up .3 relative to the leaders. This would put them under a second off the top race pace. But another .6 is dormant until France or Silverstone. Then we would see the true McLaren 2018 car. This would put them half a second off the top in race pace, enough for Alonso to do his thing.

Actually, McLaren's race pace is already under a second off Ferrari's race pace in free air. Their race pace currently is obviously significantly hampered because of traffic.

Take China for example:

When stuck behind the Haas cars, Alonso was lapping 1.5s off Raikkonen (similar strategy to Alonso), while in free air, Alonso was lapping only 0.8s off Raikkonen. Significant difference.


In Bahrain:

Alonso was stuck behind Hulkenberg the entire grand prix, which significantly hampered his race pace again. between laps 21 to 40 when McLaren was attempting a one stop, Alonso (on older mediums) was lapping 1.7s slower than Vettel (on softs). He was on pace with Hulkenberg who was on the softs as well. So Alonso's race pace was also hampered because of the Renault and tyres.

If he had free air and had soft tyres, I believe he would be lapping 1s slower than the Ferrari.


In Australia:

In the first stint, Alonso was stuck behind Sainz for the first 21 laps. During this period he was 1.4s slower than Vettel. But once he got past Sainz, he was only 0.1s off Vettel (only 3 laps, but still - this was right before the VSC). And then obviously Alonso was defending against Verstappen, so he was much slower than he should have been. He lapped only 0.87s slower than Vettel after the safety car.

And if you are going to say, but Alonso was 28 seconds behind Vettel and their were only 26 laps after the safety car, so he was lapping over a second slower, that reasoning is absolutely flawed.

It's simple, the lead car is always at an advantage during starts, because they can make up a huge chunk of time in the first lap alone. To put this into perspective, Alonso was already 5s behind Vettel after the 1st lap after the safety car restart. So in reality he only lost 22 seconds to Vettel in 25 laps, and he was defending Verstappen the entire time.


I excluded Baku race pace because Alonso had damage, so we don't know his true pace.

All these examples show McLaren has extremely strong race pace, within 1s of Ferrari, but because of their low quali position, it's significantly compromised.

If they really get a .3s gain over others in Spain, they should already be within 0.5s of the Ferrari in race pace, enough for Alonso to do his thing.

[Demetrius]

Let's see what McLaren is able to do with the new parts at the Spanish Grand Prix.

I know there has been a lot of criticism related to McLaren management, and i do agree that the current performance its embarrassing, but i still believe that with the new upgrades the team can make its way to the fourth position in the championiship standings.

[Egresi Tamás]

According to #AMuS the MCL33 B-Spec car that we will see in Barcelona will have: new deflectors under Nose, new bargeboards, new engine cover, new floor, new rear wing. #SpanishGP #F1

[Demetrius]

There are no magical steps, we all know that. In recent years, we have seen that the teams which had great improvement in race pace and qualifying was the teams that have brought constant upgrades all long the year, making the car faster in every single aspect.

I get extremely skeptical every single time that i read an article saying that McLaren should gain almost half a second or more with a "totally new package", because these kind of thing simply does not exist in F1.