McLaren MP4-18

[walter]

I finally found the location of the exhausts on the new MP4/18, they are in the diffuser area as some suspected... there is a picture that shows them glowing red hot, the only way you can spot them in such a dark area.

[Steven]

Voila!

[akbar21881]

cool...at last we know where it is.but what are the things that look like an exhaust near the sidepod?

[duplelab]

The apparent exhausts seems to be air outlets. This confirms rumours that the MP4/18 is suffering heating problems due to the confined space and thightly packed rear end. Also if you look at the first pictures of the car, these outlets are not present, which suggest that they were added afterwards to cope with the heating problem.

[Steven]

well as I said before here in another thread, it was hardly possible that these were engine exhausts, because there is no heat protection of the body at all.
Well nice to see anyway that McLaren opted again to switch away from the Ferrari exhausts. If this proves to be succesful, we'll again see some teams following McLaren's style. The good old way

[Monstrobolaxa]

Well nothing else to add to the posts!!! lolol almost everything was said!!!!

It's true what duplelab said about the heating problems and the engine cover outlets.

There is also an advantage of having the exhaust pipes underneth the car in the difuser.....but only if you studied the lesson.....if correctly installed the air flow from the exhausts helps the difuser in creating downforce!.....so Newey has been studying!!!

[schumi]

McLaren will not race the 'all-new,' visually radical MP4-18 car at any of the remaining races of the season - and perhaps not ever.

A source close to the Woking squad told us at Hockenheim that team chief Ron Dennis has made his decision to keep the 'old' MP4-17D running until Suzuka.

MP4-18, which has struggled for reliability miles, will probably be used as little more than a development vehicle for next year's car - the MP4-19.

Kimi Raikkonen, just 5th in final qualifying yesterday, is disappointed with the news that his title challenge to Michael Schumacher won't get the '18' boost.

'It is not a lot of fun but I drive the car the team gives me,' said the young Finn. 'I only concentrate on that. Of course I would like it to be faster.'

When the current F1 testing ban lifts after Hungary, McLaren will hit the development circuits with four cars; two at Monza and two at Barcelona.

After that, Dennis will make his final decision: 'It's leaning more and more towards continuing with the MP4-17D,' the Briton admitted.

'But we'd like to see the result of the next test before making a final decision on that.'
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(We've been waiting for the new MacLaren and now we are may be sure to never see it in race.) It's not really a suprise !

[-shr3d-]

hey schumi,

yeah i read that report as well and if it is true, then the MP-18 will have been one of the most expensive r&d platforms ever in F1.
I personally hope that they can get it sorted and race it even if it is just for the last 2 races....

[Monstrobolaxa]

Well.....I still race that they'll race it at least once....at the last GP of the season.....but probably they'll only do it if they're out of the fight for the championship and if the aren't in risk of loosing a position in the championship.....but anyway sh3d is right it's the most expensive R&d platform ever!

[Steven]

Well, again a McLaren thread, but I try to keep it a little clear...
I found the following on a website:

They have to run the rear suspension very stiff, as they have very weird rear suspension geometry, an issue that’s hard to resolve, because in regard to geometry, they are very limited. Due to their lightweight aluminium gearbox the team cannot use the pickup points they need, as it would cause structural problems. But despite this, they have been testing a new rear suspension and in reality, it can only be better.

Given the fact that the car is nervous, the unpredictable nature of the Carbon Industries discs adds to the problems. The more forgiving Hitco-discs cannot be used, due to the fact that they overheat this particular car.

Another issue is the Mercedes engine, as it is also on the limit. While it has more power than last years and weighs about 90 kg, it is too fragile in too many ways. They have trouble with the casting, it fails to get sufficient cooling and they cannot get enough heat out of the still quite tightly packed back of the car. The heat under the rear bodywork is also one of the reasons why their carbon-gearbox is not ready to race. They tested it recently in Paul Ricard over 330 km on two days, but over 120 degrees, it started delaminating.

Those are very serious matters... I still stand firm that the MP4/19 is an excellent engineering piece, but apparently they went so far that they forgot about other things. For example the suspension thing... can hardly believe you don't simulate the geometry planned to see if it works before the actual design. Ah well.. chop chop! @ Work McLaren guys

[Enzo]

I think that McLaren has put a lof of effort on some areas at the expense of others equally significant. And you know that a winning car is a car which is good in every sector. With MP4/18-19 McLaren designers tried to make the rear part of the car as compact as possible without thinking to much about the cooling probems that could be derive from that. And i wouldn't bet that if you put the Ilmor engine into another chassis it would be so much unreliable. In my opinion this is the main problem of the MP4/19. The faulty integration of the engine into the chassis. The engine may be good enough but it can't cooperate properly with the chassis.

I think that the MP4/19 is historically a ghost of the Lotus T80. Colin Chapman when he designed the T72 he found out that this car was understeering at the entry of the bends and oversteering at the exit of them. So he made this car more soft sprung in order to compansate this problem by the dive-squat characteristics derived from the soft suspension. With the T78 and the introduction of the ground effect he made the car even more pitch sensitive. He exploited this characteristic more with the T79 but he continued even more with the T80. The car was so pitch sensitive that after a high speed it was in fact unstable. So it went down to history as a victim of poor system integration...

[marcush.]

I have not seen a competent explanation of the trouble mclaren are in...in fact key members of the team are at loss off explaining their performance wich is alarming.
At first sight I would say the new design does not produceenough frontend downforce and they seem to have trouble going of the brakepedal in corner entry,unsettling the car enough to get imprecise on turning at the apex.I feel the front end is too pitch sensitive and so they have to resort on stiff springing more they would like,leading to a stiff rear setup to balance the thing.you end up possibly with lost traction .
but if the world would be that easy....they assumed perhaps they have to setup it as stiff anyway because they compromised the suspension due to aero(?) advantages...now the whole concept falls flat on the face as it does not go well with the michelin tyres.....
The gearbox delaminatin at 120°C ? where do you live,I´m sure Mclaren is very well capable of laminating carbonfibreparts withstanding a lot more than 120^,rest assured!

[Spencifer_Murphy]

Your right that Mclaren are capable of making carbon parts which sustain more than 120 degrees centigrade. BUT, and this is a big but. The Mclaren's gearbox is not simply a carbon 'box, like on this years BAR 006. The gearbox on the MP4-18 and MP4-19 is a "Titanium-Composite" 'box. The composite being a type of carbon fibre. This is where the problem arises. Carbon Fibre and Titanium do not bond well...at all. In fact the time it takes to go through the whole process of bonding the titanium to the carbonfibre takes approximately three months (according to a recent magazine article i read) and during that process that actual process of joing them (before bonding actually takes place) has to be done in a very short amount of time after the materials are prepared for this process, this is because the titanium builds up a small layer of oxide (which by chance is highly corrosive to the bonding technque used lol).

Not only is it therefore a laborious task to manufacture this gearbox but after successfully bonding the titanium and carbonfibre it is still suseptable to delamination (in this case the carbonfibre delaminating from the titanium NOT the carbon delaminating from the carbon as you might have though) Really this gearbox is causeing Mclaren a hell of a lot of problems for very little benifit.

[marcush.]

so one has to ask ,why should one try to bond the titanium to the carbonfibres anyway.....Iknow it is a very tricky thing you have to edge the titanium in a brew of hazardous chemicals and these have to be washed of immediatelly before the bonding...no ,thank you not for me....looks like a dog of an idea....just look at theBAR box (picture elsewhere in a thread) ,looks like they went a differnt route with success.
I remember stewart Grandprix,Mr jenkins did something like that (bonding titanium or was it aluminium to the carbonbox,and they had all the trouble......
I also find it interesting that they now begin to question the new windtunnel
and cross check their findings in the old tunnel ....(did they seriously not do that at the beginning of the work in the new facility?Icannot believe that)
I was alarmed when I heard about the trouble both drivers had to fit in the new car....this was like the early neway style ,when he did incredibly tightly packaged designs that had a operating window ,well fitting to one track...was this paul ricard back then,when capelli led gugelmin in a LeytonHouse and the rest of the year they had a beautyful car struggling to even qualify.....

[Ciwai]

It was quite a surprise to see them convert from the "W" wing to the spoon wing. And not just a dainty teacup kind of spoon but one of those heavily curved ladle types that can scoop up heaps of stew. This massive philosophical shift in the forward part of the car, (the leading edge in fact where the experts have said that the airflow determines the rest of the aerodynamic parameters for the rest of the vehicle) is indicative of the level of desperation in the mac camp, I say.