I seriously doubt that the final '09 Mclaren rear wing isn't finished.

Due to the ban on in-season testing, the teams are trying to keep their more innovative parts under wraps until Melborne. If they can keep them secret until then, it'll be all the harder (or at least more risky) for the other teams to copy them. Mclaren running a wide, low setup wing lets them build their setup profiles with the right downforce figures without letting their design out of the bag - you saw the same thing in previous years with teams running interim front wings as the rules were changed in that area. The interim high and narrow '09 wing is so they can validate their CFD and model work, not some failed first attempt.

The ban on in-season testing is also the reason we're seeing so much flow visualisation work being done. Banning real-life testing means that the teams have to test on their post rigs, simulators, wind tunnels and in CFD, so making sure that the mathmatical models they're using line up with reality as closely as possible becomes very important. The Mclaren isn't fast because it's runing an '08 wing, it's fast because it seems to be a good car.

Besides, if the setup wing was any kind of an issue, don't you think someone in the F1 media would have run a piece on it?

Someone talking sense, what's going on here?!

This seems by far the most reasonable explanation I've read on here.

+1. 'killfile' has a sound argument that we can't reject out of hand. On the contrary, IMO he may have nailed it close to the truth.

I don't think that the '09 rear-wing isn't ready either simply because Mclaren never said it wasn't ready. They just said it wasn't available for testing. That said, it will be very interesting to see when it is made public because quite a few people on this forun had written that there isn't much room for innovation in that area since the governing rules are highly restrictive.

I personally suspect that when it is made "available", we will see more than just the rear-wing, we will also see a very different car profile or packaging. We are not seeing a team that seems to be in trouble because of the absence of panick. We see their apparent systematic approach to testing. There are no sudden changes of testing plans or venues and their statements have been very consistent.

The doubts sowing are coming mainly from those that don't wish them well. These are their hopes and are attempting to back it up by speculation - speculations that they are pushing very hard to turn to "facts".

We will see...

I dont think mclaren is in deep trouble, but think of this: alot of people in this thread assumes Red Bull has shown its hand, but what if they havent? They propably also have devolopments in the pipeline, as do ALL the other teams.

This is only testing, and so far it seems that the teans are only concentrating on reliability.

there's a good possibility for that, but given they took the extra time developing the car instead of launching earlier, they might be further along their development path compared to other teams.

Excerpt from interview with Heikki: full interview here

Do you have confidence that this car will allow you to fight for wins during the season?
It’s difficult to say at the moment how good it will be. But I have all the confidence in the team that they will be able to produce another competitive car. My feeling at the moment is that I have a better feeling this year than I did last year at the same time and I know we have a lot of upgrades coming – the team has always been able to improve the package really well throughout the season so I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t have another competitive year but it’s difficult to make any further predictions than that.

I'd like to believe you. What worries me is Kovalainen describing the new car as feeling like the MP4-23 with the Monza rear wing and talking of having to modify his driving style - AGAIN. That was after day two - run almost completely with the 08 rear wing. So if the 08 variant is indeed simulating the new rear wing, there appears to be a lack of grip at the rear end. His comments were really not that gushing considering he made them on the Mclaren website. I'm beginning to doubt that the MP4-24 is currently performing as the team would like - but I have confidence in the team's ability to make marked improvements by Melbourne.

RE: Grip, Heikki said:
"It’s very much like driving last year’s car with Monza low-downforce settings!"
But that's a consequence of the new regs, not a car specific problem I'd reckon.

Surely most of the drivers will expect to modify their driving style this year... large cut in aero, brand new slicks, wobbly wings and KERS. It's just that some will adjust quicker than others and it has been said that the characteristics of the new cars would suit Heikki better than most.

Yep. Read a column in Autosport saying exactly that. That the new regs should allow Heikki to close the gap on Lewis.

I think the question on the rear wing is pretty clear actually.

The reason they are running the 2008 wing is most likely one of two classes
- there is a problem with the 2009 wing and they are simulating what they expect to get when they fix it
- the real 2009 wing is not ready yet and they are simulating what they expect to get from it.

In either case it makes no real difference to the situation - ie they are waiting for an optimally working 2009 wing. They expect certain characteristics which they are testing with by simulating with the 2008 wing. If they are right, it seems they will have a good car. If they are wrong they may have problems. When they bolt on the 2009 wing, however good it turns out to be, it wont throw any light on why they used the 2008 wing (ie if its bad it could still mean that the real wing wasnt ready but the design was inherently poor, and if its good it could still mean that the original wing didnt work, but the fix got them to where they wanted to be).

Whatever the real reason for the use of the 2008 wing (and I suspect we'll never find out), it doesnt, in itself) change what will happen this season.

How many times have we seen it written that a change in regs will benefit driver x more than driver y. The reality is that the status quo regarding drivers barely changes. Last year he seemed to find it difficult to adapt to the car, not sure it won't be the same this year.

Well it's all to do with how drivers turn into corners as you probably know. But I suspect you're right and it will only be marginal.

I I have problems with the '2009 wing not ready, let's simulate it with a 2008' theory. It just makes so little sense, 2009 wings are so much narrower and higher that I can't imagine mounting a 2008 wing on the car would give more meaningful results than a 2009 one, even if it's a interim wing. Just consider the airflow, 2008 is wider and narrower so it operates in another 'airflow window' than the 2009 one.. Dunno, their current 2009 wing must be seriously screwed up if using the 2008 one gives better data.

You've entirely missed the point. The setup wing they're using doesn't give 'better data', it's designed to give exactly the same data as the 2009 Melbourne wing. Wings provide a certain amount of downforce in exchange for a certain amount of drag. Mclaren want to keep their 2009 wing secret, so they've worked out how much downforce and drag it produces and manufactured a wide-and-low wing that has the same downforce and c/d, but doesn't give away any design secrets.

That's one hypothesis. But again, all speculation at this point.

Pure guess work unless you can back it up with some evidence.

Well let's not knock speculation . Once all the facts are facts what is there to argue about?

For me the secret scenario ticks all the boxes. A 'decent' performance wing wouldn't be any trouble at all for McLaren, and they'd be running it to find improvements. It has to be a bit special, using the processes they used for the Brazil 08 rear wing. And if it matches a detuned 08 wing, it will be .

The problem I have with your scenario is that there is very little room for, lets say, 'creative interpretation' when it comes to rear wing regulations. Be nice if I was wrong of course.

I don't really see how I missed the point. 2008-shaped wing designed to give 'exactly the same data' as their final 2009 wing without revealing it's secrets, it sounds like a fairy tale to me. As I said, I don't see how a 2008-shaped wing can give 'exactly the same' results, just because it's gonna catch air from different places than the 2009 wing, and that's a fundamental issue. It could give the same amount of downforce in certain conditions (straight line test at a fixed speed), but that's not all. Once the car is in turn, it must act differently, I don't see a way around it. Running a interim 2009 wing would be a much more obvious solution, it wouldn't rely on simulations that much (if what you're saying is true they first designed a 2008 wing that works like a 2009 and they plan on translating data from a 2008-shaped-but-2009 wing to an actual 2009 one. Again, why not design an interim 2009-shaped wing in the first place?) And that's what everybody is doing. Mclaren could be planning some major update of the car, like changing the back of the car so it fits a Williams style diffuser and maybe they figured their current 2009 wing is useless for that. But running a 2008 wing cause they feel there is no advantage in having a 2009 shaped wing on the car? I don't buy it.

Yes, that's true it seems, but then it would also make it hard to make a really bad one, I'd have thought.

Raikkonen & Massa? Kubica & Heidfeld? What about Bourdais being a match to Vettel in old car and later completely lost in new one.

Status quo DO CHANGE sometimes significantly with new regs. How do you know whether Lewis doesn't have some specific problem this year like Kimi last year? Nothing is certain.

I don't buy it either. Not to say it's impossible that McLaren has come up with something novel, but there's a good reason why Williams and Toyota, for example, showed off their creative diffusers a couple of weeks ago. They need to test them for real.

My view is that it doesn't look good at the moment. I'm also pretty happy with that. I'd also like things to be going a bit badly for Ferrari. Having two or three completely different teams and drivers at the sharp end this year would really help my interest, even if this is only a transitional year.

Pedro thinks same two teams will prevail

Pedro de la Rosa, McLaren's Spanish test driver, has ruled out Renault as a serious title contender this year. His countryman Fernando Alonso won two of the final four Grand Prix last year, but the birth of the 2008 machine's successor, the R29, has been troubled, and the car is usually slowest on the pre-season test timesheets.

Speaking with Spain's new F1 television broadcaster La Sexta, 37-year-old de la Rosa said he expects usual suspects McLaren and Ferrari to battle for the championship. "I hope I am wrong and that there are others," McLaren's reserve driver admitted.

He said that despite the huge changes to the regulations, the test results so far depict a close contest. But when asked if Renault could be the surprise of the season, de la Rosa instead said that Williams looks likely to make a major improvement this year.

f1-live.com

The other question is that if they knew that the launch wing was nothing like the Melbourne one, why bother running it through out day one and for some of day two?

It's simply part of the testing programme, you're reading too much into it I'm afraid.

Don't know if it's already been mentioned but i'm pretty sure i remember autosport saying that one team is apparently developing a new diffuser in light of the diffuser desins on the williams and the toyota. It could be that mclaren are developing a wing that works in conjunction with the diffuser like on the red bull rb5. Just speculation.

Well I hope that is the case,. though I'm not confident.

It's probably too late to debut a new spec car with differing rear end philosophy. Could probably debut a new diffuser, but not sure if you can sufficiently reduce the height of the rear sidepods to aid the diffuser airflow, as that will require re-locating internal components.

I imagine if the car is confirmed a brick (at Melbourne) then we will perhaps get a B spec car midway through the season if resources allow, or they abandon this year, stick with what they got, and concentrate on 2010 car.

Has anybody been able to analyse the times of the 09 wing vs 08 wing on the MP4-24? It seems to be common theres a 2 sec difference in laptime, but I don't know if this is just hearsay.

Has anybody said when this new rear wing is expected ?

Possibly but it would be nice if the teams could actually take some time to explain some testing philosophies.

You'd think that Matt Bishop might have a bit of time to put together a reasonable explanation of why things are done the way they are which does not give away anything to other teams.

What benefit does a team get from running illegal parts?
What do all those odd protuberances do?
What's that funny pus coloured paint?
Why would a team run underweight?
What do personnel 'measure' when they look at other teams cars at this stage?
Why does the team run particular stint lengths?
Do the fast times really matter or are they, generally, showboating?
How many parts, typically, are tested each test?
How close are results to wind tunnel tests (in general terms) and how much better is real testing than CFD?
...not an exhaustive list...

Some of these I know the answers to and some I don't. Some, other forum members will know the answers to, or can speculate. Articles like this are exactly the sort of thing that would help fans to get closer to the sport without having to bother a driver for autographs.

problem is, alot of that information may be viewed as 'sensitive'.

So, another clue!

Not an unexpected thing, then. Can we rule out the bad wing theory?

Perhaps we have to rule out the super fandango wing theory as well...

The remaining conundrum being that it's a wide, low 08 wing, albeit at some modest angle, which presumably can't perform too differently from the final 09 wing.

Maybe then, the 09 wing is not flawed.
Maybe, it's not some kind of 'super wing' either.
Instead it's a wing that has had it's design developed and tweaked /altered right up to the last minute and therefore simply was not ready for this test and may be tested in the future along with a package of other aero tweaks. So they used an 08 wing to perform as an iterim stop gap. Not a very exciting situation but then the truth rarely is.
Could all be BS of course.

Sorry I don't believe that. I'm not asking for this in terms of the daily report, but in terms of an article/page/one-off report which talks about testing and the philosophies of testing.

All the teams will work in a very similar way.

I'm not asking why, in particular, they are using 2008 wing on a 2009 car, but why they might consider results gathered with a 2008 wing are just as good. Maybe the wing is irrelevant for the moment. Maybe, when you're testing fuel economy and reliability of mechanical parts (so KERS) they just can't meaningfully measure aero so who gives a toss? Maybe that's where STR is at the moment?

STR is in a different situation, they simply wait till Red Bull will give them their car. They're stuck for the moment.

I think it would be great to get that information. I guess I'm just pessimistic about ever getting it for the reason I've outlined.

Just as a general rule for testing, surely it's always best to sort reliability first before moving onto outright performance. I feel we may still be in the 'sorting reliability' phase of testing. So I'm actually not sure there is much we can define from these early testing times!

The problem is that if Matt Bishop - or for that matter anyone actually involved in F1 - ever wrote anything on this forum about testing methodology, it'd be instantly drowned out by people disagreeing, dismissing it as speculation or completely misunderstanding what was said.

No one else is to blame if one had built his image in a way his words are always doubted ...

That sounds likely. The encouraging thing is that there seems to be a big difference in performance between the basic 09 wing and the stand-in 08 wing. I can't think of any reason why they would set the 08 wing up to give more downforce than they're expecting from the Melbourne 09 wing...

You know something guys, if Mclaren had began to spend time explaining away the reasons and defending them, I would be very worried because that would be strong evidence to me that they are in trouble.

When you truly know what you are doing and confident about it, you really don't spend time on justification.
We are seeing a confident, focused and methodical team of competent professionals at work. One more point, the paddock are filled with extremely professionals and I bet if they (Mclaren) are having issues and attempting a cover-up, there would have been leaks and anonymous statements enamating from there; just like during the MP18 debacle.

Most of the negative contributons in this forum regarding this "issue" are from individuals who don't understand what "testing" in F1 or any field really is about. The more resources and time at your disposal the more thorough you test and validate the results against all sorts of pre-defined scenarios.

I will conclude by saying - cool it guys, we are doing really fine.

Yep. Still too early to say where we are.

Teams usually set performance targets are the car conception and this are usually set very high.
Some teams would be satisfied if they can produce a car that is 1 sec/lap slower than their 2008 car. Mclaren might on the other hand want to produce a car that is in no way slower than the 2008 car.

How do you go about this? one way of achieving that goal is doing what they are doing right now with the 2008 rear-wing on the 2009 car.

We just don't know. What we do know is that the team's aim is to win and they know how to and they are confident - openly confident in their 2009 car.

If guys have facts that proves that the team is in trouble, let them produce it!

True, so the answer is not to do it here.

It could/should be on the teams site. Again, they don't need to comment on what they've done this week but general principals.

It's like these little graphics-heavy items you get describing a pitstop. They're all superficially interesting for people who've followed F1 for a few weeks but to people here they are less than interesting. I'd like to know a lot more about the complexity and thought processes of even those with what appear to be the most simple tasks. I think we've seen pitstops go wrong in almost every way possible, involving everyone in the team, so it's not easy. From jack man to refueller, there are things that can go wrong. I'd love to know what and where their attention is when a car comes in through to waving it away.

The BMW pitlane park had a great exercise where people could take part in a pitstop and it's 'sort of' interesting but again it lacks some of the detail.

They should run a twitter blog during a GP weekend

Read last McLaren reports precisely. For me the reports from 10th & 11th Feb. are a bit strange, extremely precise and it's not typical for them imho to write such kind of reports. They are full of explanations what they did during tests but e.g. there's no a single word about this liquid air flow vis.

But maybe it's just my wrong impression.

Parts are not illegal until the team's inquiry to FIA is not answered.
Prost was runnig his crappy car underweight, bcs that was the only way to look fast to the french sponsors.
Currently, I think nobody can simulate a desert storm in the windtunnel.

The cars can run as illegal as they like during testing, that's the fact. The question is why might they want to.

I just did. They were both summaries of the tests and they were consistent. The information is no stranger than the report of most of the other teams.

Which aspect/s of the reports did you find confusing? direct quotes please.

Brake duct extensions now appearing on the inside of the front wheels.
I'm beginning to believe the extensions on the outside are no testing apparatus of some sort but a permanent aero feature.

http://www.f1today.nl/fotos/87nk30fu1.jpg
http://www.f1today.nl/fotos/tkyu9ekd2.jpg

Maybe but from this shot, it looks like an extra front DF generating inclusion.

They're featured as such on the official Formula 1 site in the tech updates section. Very interesting development IMO. Much more reliant on never spinning than what we've seen before. While some systems could cope with being put on slightly incorrectly, these don't look like they would.