2021 Mclaren F1 Team

[Emag]

Five tenths seems huge to be honest. Hard to believe Renault is that far behind Mercedes considering how relatively well the engine has performed on power-sensitive circuits in these last two years.

[diffuser]

Seidl, however, wants to keep the ball low. With Renault as its customer engine, McLaren already managed third place in the constructors’ standings in 2020. With Mercedes (according to experts, it brings an advantage of three to five tenths of a second, depending on the track), even more could be possible.

https://f1-insider.com/en/formula1/mcla ... -mercedes/

I find this hard to believe, journalists just pull figures out of the air, depending on the mood.... The “According to experts” line has been so abused by these guys, which experts exactly?

Everyone makes huge gains. Problem is you don't know what huge is till March. In March, what once was thought of as huge, can turn out to be small. Then they start making huge excuses.

Remember 2018? "Oh, yeah..the problem was the Honda PU, we'll be so fast. Hell, we have tons of time to integrate the new PU...then come May, they started firing people.

You guys can do and say whatever you want but I'll stick to the facts. I hope they do well but there will be no facts till March. Nobody won the constructor's in January.

[Shader]

I have a feeling we will get car reveal date by the end of next week.... Last year, the date was also revealed around 1 month before reveal and considering testing is in second week of March, it seems most plausible. The hype train is coming. Chu Chuu!

[mwillems]

Five tenths seems huge to be honest. Hard to believe Renault is that far behind Mercedes considering how relatively well the engine has performed on power-sensitive circuits in these last two years.

Yeah this is true. But it also wouldn't surprise me if Mercedes had sacrificed a little straight line speed for a better cornering downforce in their concept, and the engine is a little more powerful than it looks.

But yeah, 3 to 5 tenths seems a bit far fetched, be lovely if it was true.

As everyone repeats, we will find out in the first few races, it's getting exciting now....

[M840TR]

Five tenths seems huge to be honest. Hard to believe Renault is that far behind Mercedes considering how relatively well the engine has performed on power-sensitive circuits in these last two years.

Yeah this is true. But it also wouldn't surprise me if Mercedes had sacrificed a little straight line speed for a better cornering downforce in their concept, and the engine is a little more powerful than it looks.

But yeah, 3 to 5 tenths seems a bit far fetched, be lovely if it was true.

As everyone repeats, we will find out in the first few races, it's getting exciting now....

If by cornering you mean tighter packaging then yeah, it has its benefits over Renault in that regard. Not just due to the turbo layout but its ability to deliver greater performance with lesser cooling demands is sometimes overlooked when comparing the two.

[mwillems]

Five tenths seems huge to be honest. Hard to believe Renault is that far behind Mercedes considering how relatively well the engine has performed on power-sensitive circuits in these last two years.

Yeah this is true. But it also wouldn't surprise me if Mercedes had sacrificed a little straight line speed for a better cornering downforce in their concept, and the engine is a little more powerful than it looks.

But yeah, 3 to 5 tenths seems a bit far fetched, be lovely if it was true.

As everyone repeats, we will find out in the first few races, it's getting exciting now....

If by cornering you mean tighter packaging then yeah, it has its benefits over Renault in that regard. Not just due to the turbo layout but its ability to deliver greater performance with lesser cooling demands is sometimes overlooked when comparing the two.

Not just with the engine concept, but with the aero aswell, Merc said before that they traded some added drag for better traction through corners as it paid dividends for their laptime. But again, they can do this because their engine is so good. It is perhaps a stronger engine that allows the Merc to run a higher downforce package overall and still be as fast if not faster on the straights.

Also whilst folks compare peak output, I do have a feeling the Merc can sustain that peak output for longer through efficient harvesting and distribution. Reliability was a strong point at one point, but now they are much of a muchness.

But..... we will find out later in the year. And sadly, I doubt Mclaren will offer too much by way of detailed comparison, so we will likely be coming to our own conclusions...

[_cerber1]

"I think our strengths have been typically the high-speed corners," he explained, speaking about what weaknesses were being addressed for this year. "Certainly from the beginning of the season, we were very competitive in the medium and higher speed corners.

"Straight line braking has been another strength of ours as well, which benefited us on some tracks – like Austria for example.

"I think in terms of weaknesses, we still need to improve ourselves a bit in low speed. It's not quite as weak as it was [in 2019], and that was one of the big pushes to try and improve that low speed, balance and consistency that we had in certain types of low speed corners.

"Then, in some conditions, the car doesn't perform quite as well as we'd like it to - and that's in some weather conditions or some grip conditions, which we can kind of see in the data.

"We need to understand that actually, but it's not one of those overnight fixes. So that's what we're really targeting. I think if we can iron some of that out, we'll have a more consistent car from one race to the next."

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mcla ... l/5188961/

[adrianjordan]

Seidl, however, wants to keep the ball low. With Renault as its customer engine, McLaren already managed third place in the constructors’ standings in 2020. With Mercedes (according to experts, it brings an advantage of three to five tenths of a second, depending on the track), even more could be possible.

https://f1-insider.com/en/formula1/mcla ... -mercedes/

I find this hard to believe, journalists just pull figures out of the air, depending on the mood.... The “According to experts” line has been so abused by these guys, which experts exactly?

Maybe Professor Trelawney??

[Emag]

Mercedes (well Toto) has already said that they expect cars to be slower for the first part of this year due to the downforce and tire changes: https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/15437 ... -this-year

But that's coming from the fastest car in the grid, the rest have margin for improvement. So it isn't that farfetched to believe that certain teams (McLaren included) can be faster than they were in 2020 from the get-go. In the special case of McLaren, lets assume the tire + downforce cutoff takes away up to 0.5% of laptime. If the new power unit brings 0.5% improvement (that's from power + the packaging benefits) as these experts are assuming (they say 0.5 seconds, but 0.5% might turn out to be less than 0.5 seconds on some tracks, so I guess on average it's within that range), then that means that whatever aero development that McLaren has made over the winter, and potential improvements to the whole package in general will translate to direct pace improvement compared to Mercedes.

McLaren managed to cut off ~0.3% to Mercedes from 2019 to 2020. But Mercedes had a monster of a car in 2020. Compared to themselves, McLaren improved at around 0.7% over their 2019 car. Considering the restrictions for this year, that 0.7% perhaps is a little too optimistic. But assuming the best case scenario, McLaren improves by 0.5% on the chassis side from their 2020 car. That translates to 0.5% of net gain compared to their 2020 car (after taking off the losses from the rule changes + the assumed improvements from the power unit).

Since Mercedes thinks they will be slower than 2020 initially this year, that means that we can expect Mercedes to only make an improvement of 0.3-0.4% in 2021 from their own car in 2020 (which after taking off the assumed 0.5% from the new rules, that leaves them 0.1% slower). In this scenario, McLaren ends up 0.6-0.7% behind Mercedes at the start of 2021 ...

To put that number in perspective, that would mean that McLaren at the start of 2021 can potentially be better than RedBull was on average throughout 2020 compared to Mercedes.

That's why that 0.5s number seems way too exaggerated in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I hope it is true. But realistically speaking, we can't really expect McLaren to make that huge of a jump.

[PhillipM]

I don't know who is saying 5 tenths but I can tell you the figure bandied around on the factory floor for the difference is like 10kw peak. Nobody is bothered about that, they're more exited about the cooling packaging being smaller because it's a little more efficient in sustained mode.

[CjC]

13.41 HP per lap over a race distance though

[godlameroso]

That's almost 2 tenths per lap just from extra power. I'm guessing the rest comes from tighter packaging the lower cooling requirement affords them as well as the more compact nature of the power unit/transmission package. Other than that, McLaren is probably working on a cape friendly aero package.

[mwillems]

That's almost 2 tenths per lap just from extra power. I'm guessing the rest comes from tighter packaging the lower cooling requirement affords them as well as the more compact nature of the power unit/transmission package. Other than that, McLaren is probably working on a cape friendly aero package.

Am I being daft? Peak power is when we have the engine on full beans and are deploying the battery , which is not for the whole lap, so is it really 2 tenths per lap?
What engine mode is this peak power in, and how does that compare to the typical engine modes that Merc and Renault can run in the race and what is the difference there?

Edit: Typed "second" and not "lap" 2 tenths per second is a rather dramatic increase

[godlameroso]

Almost two tenths. The thing is peak power advantage can actually be worth more than just the HP gain. If you have 10hp to spare, you can use those 10hp to charge the battery and still have the same power as someone who doesn't have that flexibility. The result is you can trickle charge the ERS while a lesser engine cannot.

[SmallSoldier]

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