Friday morning. Prior to the start of the official session in early 2017, all the staff members gathered at the pit garage of McLaren Honda , and three leaders, executive director Zach Brown, racing director Eric Brieier, and Hasegawa Yusuke F1 general manager Become "morning meeting" was held.
"Many people are making noise, but our partner is Honda, we will work together as team"
Briier declared so that he would face the staff and asked for unity again within the team that was getting more upset by the confusion that had been going on just after the Barcelona joint test. After entering Melbourne, discussions were held over and over between McLaren and Honda, and the relationship between the two companies, which had been hidden and visible at a time even as a part of collaborative resolution was overcome, went for repair.
Fernando Alonso showed MCL 32 to position 13 in the qualifying, although it was the opening race to be prepared with even the lowest dispute. General manager Hasegawa speaks.
"I think it was good in the sense that the power of the machine package and the driver was out, but some new rookie drivers of other teams were struggling and sometimes I was able to go there so far, and the potential of the car Considering that, it is an honest place that I could well go there so well. "
Substantially slightly above Sauber. That was McLaren Honda's current competence.
The biggest reason is still power shortage.
"The difference is quite severe as the straight is losing about 8 to 9 km / h, which is quite severe.It is still a big influence of the power difference .... Of course the car also talks that the car is over and under There are also places where setup has not been decided yet, but the biggest part of the whole was that the straight speed was slow. "
The problem of drivability that was seen as a problem in the pre-opening test was improved considerably by boiling the combustion setting. I brought the latest specification with handwork on the hardware side as "specification 1" of the opening game specification. However, significant improvement in power can not be done in one day or two days.
"The maturing ripening (optimization of burning by)" has been quite satisfactory on the bench, so that part has improved considerably, but in terms of output we have not reached our goal and ICE Improvement of the internal combustion engine itself is necessary, so we can not say it right now, I realize that is the biggest challenge. "(Hasegawa)
Even on the body surface, I got a restless behavior that was unsettled at cornering and it was clattering.
Only the three small parts were brought in with what is called "opening aero package", and it seems that it will also show the maximum effect Barge board (*) Only one set of arm type stay at the front end can make it in time, Alonso It was worn only by a car. However, it did not seem like an item that fundamentally solves the problem of MCL 32.
* Aeroparts mounted on the side of the barge board = nose and beside the cockpit.
An engineer with a team speaks about the symptoms.
"As the tendency of the machine still understeer, it is the cause of not being able to warm the tire.If it thinks that it is getting warmer, this time (only the surface of the tire) overheats and the rear becomes unstable "
According to the latest information, in 2017 machines where the engine full opening rate and air resistance increased, the power has a 0.2 second / 10 kW (about 13.4 horsepower) impact on lap time. Even if the Honda's power unit is 100 horsepower inferior to Mercedes AMG (although there is not much difference in reality), the lap time is only 1.49 seconds difference. The difference of 2.2 seconds from the Bartheli / Buttas of the top in Q2 is found to be due to the inferior performance of both the car body and the power unit being inferior.
Besides that, the MCL 32 had many problems.
The problem of getting caught with intense metal sounds at upshifting. Every time, the driver was subjected to a big shock that would hit the body without thinking.
In the qualifying, air enters the fuel line of Stelle Bandon and the fuel pressure drops. On the other hand, in the second-hand Ultra Soft, the last corner can not run at full throttle, but by operating a fine throttle around full throttle the wastegate valve opens to prevent abnormal rise in turbocharging, and at the end of the lap I was losing power.
In the final, if you think that the computer connected to the Bando machine on the grid was in a hurry due to the problem of not displaying data, the screen display on the steering wheel got stuck in "out wrap" early and reset, There was also a scene in which wrong instructions are issued to reset another function. Ultimately, the electronic control system issues an error warning and automatically stops the power generation from the MGU-H (*) , and you have to return to the pit and restart the power supply of the whole machine It was.
※ MGU - H = Motor Generator Unit - Heat stands for. Apparatus for regenerating thermal energy from exhaust gas.
However, Alonso followed the Force India's Esteban Okon and Renault's Nico Hülkenberg backwards for 1 second and kept running for 50 laps. I skillfully manipulated the MCL 32, which should be straight late, and continued to hold down the Force India loading the Mercedes AMG power unit.
I also admired that Hasegawa's general manager was also a supernatural driving.
"While keeping it out of the okon, keeping him within one second difference and using DRS (*) , on the contrary it was making sure that the okon was not pulled out of that behind Hülkenberg. (Tire It's tough to have Hülkenberg in front, because it's also saving fuel economy, it's truly a supernatural driving, is not it? "
※ DRS stands for Drag Reduction System. Drag reduction system / down force suppression system.
But at the end it ended with breakage of the suspension.
Actually, McLaren has given MCL 32 a considerable weight saving, and the weight of the car is significantly lower than the minimum weight of 728 kg. It is a good thing for itself to be able to optimize the machine balance and center of gravity by installing ballast (weight) for that much, but in the case of MCL 32 it is lighter than expected assuming that the weight actually measured by MCL 32, ballast is enough It was enough to worry about losing it.
There is also a view that such excessive weight saving may not be limited to this suspension damage but may cause problems such as poor connector of the harness and cracks of the carbon pipe which frequently occurred from pre-opening tests.
In any case, although the drivers suffered from the problem of MCL 32, they showed the maximum potential of the current situation. In other words, there is no way to go ahead beyond raising the potential of the machine.
Alonso who finished the race did not explode the frustration, nor did it blame the power unit alone, just talked about it.
"I was able to prepare the body in a very nice form and I am in the best condition and I am in the season.I feel that my career is also driving the best, so I contend for one point Of course I am ready to win, but of course I am ready to win, but we are not ready as a team, which is a shame.Okay the team is doing It's a problem. "
Bando who finished 13th out of the 13 runs with a delay of two laps on the pit stop also craved for team unity and development push.
"As a total package, we are clearly not at the pace of fighting with the former group, we still need to push development as we have a big difference with them.I like updating every race and going ahead step by step In the next China Grand Prix, we are hoping that new parts will be introduced into the car, the pace will improve and we can make further progress. "
The reality is confronted, neither the car body nor the power unit is to blame one another, but rather we must push each other in cooperation with each other and get out of this difficulty.
Improvement of output is not as ready as it needs further development of ICE. Hasegawa's general manager also has a feeling of being caught up in this situation.
"Since the direction of development is fixed as a developer, there is no other choice but to proceed with it solemnly, but as a battle fighting this sport it is unlikely that it would be good. Because I can not talk about excluding emotional things (losing, regretting, wanting to win), the feeling of not being able to talk about this is much bigger. "
However, what we need for ourselves now is not self-protection nor political conflict, it's only to show by results.
"Regardless of how the team is being made a bad guy, they are the most disappointing and I know best what they are not satisfied.On the other hand, in this situation, As a partner fighting and becoming a fighting partner) I think that it will support, so I think that we only respond with the result afterwards. "
The way we should go is that both McLaren and Honda will work hard to improve themselves. Both McLaren and Honda's sides recognized this again.
Received the reality again, accepted, understand this as a whole team, and deepened unity again. That was the opening game of 2017, the Australian Grand Prix.
