Mclaren Honda 2015

[ollandos]

Look at it one way, the only way is up!

Do we have any speed trap numbers?

about -10km/h all sectors.....something like that from mercedes-ferrari with williams faster all ...+4-5km/h

[Jolle]

McLaren is in a bit of a strange situation now. I think they tried with signing Alonso and building the wonderful return of Honda to secure a good big sponsor. Now the season started they have an engine that doesn't work, no sponsor, two very experienced and expensive drivers and 6 seconds off the pace.

With the return of Alonso being one big question mark and the lack of pace, I can't see any company investing as a titel sponsor any time soon. I can imagine that Ron already has been on the phone to Alonso: sure you want to come back? we can tear up the contract, no hard feelings...

[SidSidney]

I thought after the last test Honda were saying it was a championship winning car... what happened?

Formula 3 championship.

[piast9]

If my calculations are correct Magnussen is 3 tenths away from the 107% rule. Close to not be able to finish the race tomorrow.

Your calculations are not correct. Q1 107% time was 1:28.586 * 107% = 1:34.787. They were about 3 seconds faster.

[H2H]

McLaren went from the clearly best PU from a highly reliable supplier turned also key competitor to a new strategic partner. The big decision has clearly roots in years past and the upsides still make sense but the downside has likely been undervalued as the PU is not only a big differentiator performance-wise but also not easy to get working and integrated with some reliability. The severe lack of testing will make it's impact felt over the whole year in performance and points.*

It is quite a shame that such a great team will have a huge mountain to climb and such an asthonishing investment into the rest of the car will have likely for quite some time not much of an impact. McLaren Honda can recover but this year will likely get written off quickly in terms of points and podiums...

P.S: On a personal note I have seen quite a guys doing a terrible job in 'strategic' decision-making because doing new deals with new guys is just much more sexy then working hard on a current business relationship and and it's problems. If the big boss wants it almost always the risks get minimized by smart presentations and calculations supplied eagerly by the staff...

*RBR made a superb job last year despite the big troubles with the PU and it's associated and resulting problems.It is highly unlikely that another team can repeat that recovery, especially since the other teams are in relative terms on a much stronger basis.

[Vasconia]

mclaren needs 2 years more ........4 years is the time for winning team

ferrari start 96' won 2000
red-bull 2006-2010
mercedes 2010 -2014
mclren mercedes 1994-1998

mclaren honda project started 2013 ...

Well, Ferrari did not have the best car in 1997 and 1998 but was enough to compete. I would be happy if McLaren is at the same level in 2016.

[diffuser]

McLaren went from the clearly best PU from a highly reliable supplier turned also key competitor to a new strategic partner. The big decision has clearly roots in years past and the upsides still make sense but the downside has likely been undervalued as the PU is not only a big differentiator performance-wise but also not easy to get working and integrated with some reliability. The severe lack of testing will make it's impact felt over the whole year in performance and points.*

It is quite a shame that such a great team will have a huge mountain to climb and such an asthonishing investment into the rest of the car will have likely for quite some time not much of an impact. McLaren Honda can recover but this year will likely get written off quickly in terms of points and podiums...

.

While I don't disagree with you, I do think you're being a little too pessimistic. If they can finish tomorrow with at least 1 car, I presume that is where they would have hoped to be during the test in Barcelona starting Feb 19. Which puts them about 3-4 weeks behind schedule.

The question is, do they keep improving at this horribly slow rate or is the worst behind them? They MUST speed progress up or ....................

[McG]

In hindsight the best thing for McLaren and Honda would have been for McLaren to stick with Mercedes for another year while Honda track tested their engine. Maybe even for another 2 years. Not saying it's all Honda's fault because McLaren is lacking in downforce, think JB said so. So in reality McLaren have had 3 bad cars for 3 years in a row which is unacceptable considering they just switched from the best engine to the worst. There are no excuses. All we have heard for the past 3 years is the same thing but it just gets worse.

It will be first if McLaren can make up such a large time deficit to Williams and Ferrari during the year, and if they do, so what. It will be too late then time to start over winter testing, which as seen by Ferrari, other teams can leapfrog one another and it's a fresh start. There's on guarantee that development will be linear from season end through winter testing.

I'm a McLaren fan and supporter and have always had hope. But there is literally no hope this season and I don't feel like watching McLaren have a full test year. I've followed all testing live, then lost hope before qualifying, so recorded it instead of watching it live, now the only thing keeping me interested is hoping Kimi does well and actually Ferrari is quite interesting the way they turned last years dog of a car into something better.

Ah I don't know.

[AxialTurbine]

Seems to me that there are going to be some severely kicked backsides at both honda and McLaren. I,m pretty sure Honda don't want to be the joke of the paddock which is what they are looking at the moment. Also where is Fernando he,s not even in oz supporting the team through these tough moments.... For the money he is on he should at least be in the garage supporting the team.

[H2H]

While I don't disagree with you, I do think you're being a little too pessimistic. If they can finish tomorrow with at least 1 car, I presume that is where they would have hoped to be during the test in Barcelona starting Feb 19. Which puts them about 3-4 weeks behind schedule.

The question is, do they keep improving at this horribly slow rate or is the worst behind them? They MUST speed progress up or ....................

First of all I'm not McLaren supporter but I certainly have a huge respect for the company. Overall it is not my style to make big prediction but in this case I have a hard time to see things going for the team.

1) The competition is in relative terms much more solid then last year on the PU side and it's integration. Reliability should be better and development closer to the mark after having worked the first year within the new rule set.

2) McLaren profited from the best PU last year but was only third-best team not much ahead of a Force India in difficulties.
This was the second year in a row when the chassis swas not up to the best of the competition which combined with earlier years didn't promise to much for this one.

3) This year the big unknown factor of the Honda engine was added in to this very basic calculation and the terrible troubles are not only shockingly bad in itself but have also big repercussions on the development of the car. Compared to practially all the other teams far fewer track data could be generated and fed back into the system.

This is a much steeper and bigger mountain then RBR faced which had for the many years at least the second best chassis or, more often, the top one. It's considerable PU troubles happened in a relatively easier environment where also the Ferrari one was inferior. Honda faces the competition in a different state even if it is fundamentally a competitive engine. The sheer complexity in itself and it's interactions*, make failures in many ways likely, puts a big premium on experience of which the others have a lot more.

McLaren is in my humble opinion hugely important to the sport I love so I hope that they will recover quickly. Sadly I fear that in this season it won't be easy to finish overall in the top 6.

*This is of course completely different from older days when the integration of an engine into an F1 car was far easier.

[Mui]

What's interesting is that nobody from Honda or McLaren are saying the PU is fundamentally wrong. I think they must have seen that the raw performance is good in a dyno back at the Sakura factory although maybe only briefly. The only problem now is optimizing the PU for the car. When to harvest, when to discharge, rate of harvest, rate of discharge etc.. These can only be solved with running time and reliability.

To be fair, they've done exactly what they said and what many in this forum and many F1 pundits have said. Design a car/PU that's aggressive and use reliability upgrades throughout the season to make the engine more reliable. I think everyone has figured out by now that the only way to beat the Mercedes PU is by the shear potential of their own PU in the first place.

What's frustrating is that now that they have 2 cars to do testing with they suddenly go into conservative mode. Dennis and Arai both saying that they shouldn't burn their PU's in the first few races but their at the back of the field now, they can't go back anymore even if they burn 10 PU's (can they?). They should at least test the limits of the PU with one their cars, have one car go round track with limited power to gather data and the other go 100% to see if the engine will break, catch fire or any other reliability issues that they may have.

As for McLaren, Alonso and JB fans, pls be more frustrated and be more vocal about your disappointments so that Dennis can actually feel the pressure. It used to be that Whitmarsh was answerable to Dennis. But since Dennis is chairman who is he answerable too.

[zeph]

2) McLaren profited from the best PU last year but was only third-best team not much ahead of a Force India in difficulties.
This was the second year in a row when the chassis swas not up to the best of the competition which combined with earlier years didn't promise to much for this one.

Mark Hughes of Motorsport Magazine wrote an excellent analysis about the MP4-29, I linked to it a few pages back.

Among other things, he suggests the Merc PU was designed to work with Petronas fuel, which put McLaren's (Mobil) PU at a ~40hp disadvantage at the start of the season.

It is one of the reasons why Williams stuck with Petronas, even though they were sponsored by Petrobras.

[kooleracer]

I'm not here to bash McLaren, but i'm really disappointed in Honda. They had 2 years and the luxury off having data from the best engine in 2014. But still the engine is unreliable. Its there first year. But last years Ferrari engine was not as fast as the Mercedes but it ran reliably. Honda hasn't even achieved to build a reliable engine. It's the first race of the season, but there are 5 seconds of the ultimate pace. It's becoming embarrassing the mighty McLaren.

[SidSidney]

Well I think this start to the season puts the cooler on any major sponsorship ambitions.

As I said once before, McLaren is just not delivering the goods to attract senior money, no matter what Ron thinks about being Man United, they are playing at Darlington League levels now. This start just emphasises that dark fact.

I actually start to wonder if Alonso was "extending" his medical condition to avoid the humiliation he surely knew was coming?

[Andres125sx]

They should at least test the limits of the PU with one their cars, have one car go round track with limited power to gather data and the other go 100% to see if the engine will break, catch fire or any other reliability issues that they may have.

Agree, but only after ensuring they can finish a race at current conservative mode. Considering they have never done a stint longer than... 20 laps? and always with a limited power output it would be simply crazy to put the PU at its max for a full 60 laps race without previous experience