The concept of "something radical that gives a huge advantage" is so... "eighties" ;)

It hasn't happened that way for a long time, though obviously this seasons radical rule changes are the best chance for a (short, anyway) return of such concept. We'll see.

One thing that does strike me about the responses here is a lot of people seem to be under the impression that pre-season testing is about seeing how fast you can go. It's not. In fact, it's the last thing you want to do. You give away too much to the competition and there's too high a risk of breaking the car.

Mclaren certainly aren't alone in revising their rear end to use the same approach as Williams and Toyota. If there isn't a double-decker diffuser on the F60 at Melbourne, I'd be astonished.

I've found it impossible to see whos doing good at preseason testing, Ferrari and Red Bull seem to be doing ok but we don't know what they're testing, with McLaren its not only the times but the curious movements they are going through in their testing has a lot confused.


Which team are you affiliated with Killfile or is it if you told me you'd have to kill me ;-)

But sure it's still about testing how your components interact and accumulating data to be able and set up the car quickly and reliably during the limited time on GP weekends?

If McLaren feel they can simulate all that... good for them if true. As I said, we'll see.

It's all moot speculation of course, but what else to do while waiting for the flag to finally drop?

Well, theoretically they do, but it depends on their simulations being accurate. If you've built it on a set of faulty assumptions - say, you commissioned your shiny new wind tunnel too quickly - you can have some very unpleasant surprises in pre-season testing. Not that, um, anyone has done that recently.

Mclaren probably have the most sophistication simulation setup in F1, so if it's working well you could see them start to move ahead in the development race now that in-season testing has been banned. Of course, if any team creeps ahead too far, expect the FIA to allow everyone a mid-season test. Well, either that or find something on their car that is 'illegal' ...

Think back to the pre season testing of the 2004 season, ferrari seemingly average all winter then at Imola wiped the floor with everyone.

But I don't for one second believe McLaren are using such a tactic because history and patterns dictate Mclaren have always gone as fast as they can during testing because they consider positive PR on themselves as a core corporate objective at all times, they do call their sponsers, partners afterall unless ofcourse this season turns out to be like 98 which I highly doubt.

You're absolutely right, pre-season testing is about putting time on the car, validating your simulation data and, most important of all, developing setup profiles. (Although working out if KERS is going to maim you horribly or not is eating into this formula this year.)

You don't have to run the car on the ragged edge to get good setup data - if the car is where you predict it'll be at 80%, it'll likely be where you predict at 100% too

I agree about Mclaren not being the only team working on ripping off Williams diffuser design. But they're are the only team to keep on mounting 2008 wing on their car which simply has to make people wonder about what is going on, especially that their 2009 car with a 2009 shaped wing is just plain slow. And they sound like they're making rather poor excuses about reason of it (as pointed out by a different poster here: it was wet. we're testing KERS. we wan't to have a full 2009 level of downforce etc.)
I don't want to repeat my posts from a month ago or so, as I think they still stand: 2008 wing might simulate their final 2009 wing downforce level but car mounted with it is gonna act differently by default, just look at the damn thing. 2009 is a lot narrower and higher (duh!) then the 2008 one so it works in a different 'airflow window'. Yeah, Mclaren have their great simulator which is probably workin 24-7 on translating the data they gather with 2008 wing to car's behavior with a 2009-shaped one. Problem is, all the other teams have actual data gathered on track with an actual 2009 wing plus the computer data. I'm a bit baffled by how many people repeat the 'hey, 2008 wing simulates 2009 downforce level, no biggie' mantra. If it was that simple we wouldn't have all new aero regulations.

Still, Mclaren might be spot on with their simulations, but thinking so requires a solid dose of optimism at this point.


*waiting for people calling me a troll and a Ferrari fan-boy*

Can you imagine the state we're going to be in if they do keep using the 09 wing [edit I mean 08 ] for the rest of the week?

Actually I have a feeling Mac always planned this, and Williams and Toyota gave the game away but Mac stayed with their testing plan anyway. Judging by the launch sidepods perhaps Ferrari didn't spot it and are playing ketchup?

ATM_Andy as good as said they had seen it independently, and AFAIK he has never told us wrong. I think they saw it but kept it quiet.

That was all about tyres, IIRC. More so, about bespoke "Ferrari" tyres from Bridgestone.

I bet if you would suddenly bolt state-of-the-art, maximum performance tyres on a on a random current car (instead of BS's current "cheap-for-everyone" solution), that effect could easily be repeated any day.

But the last time a single technological breakthrough made a car blitz the field was probably the active suspension of the '92 Williams. So okay, that was in the nineties...

Ferrari and RedBull are testing their 09 car thats pretty obvious the debate question is why isn't McLaren to put it simply.

They have got it wrong before, so to Ferrari, well so to everyone. Its bound to happen BUT its too early to tell and I think 3 races in we will know if its 1 true, 2 total design failure (Honda) or 3 fixable and nothing to worry about.

I am tipping that they will be pretty much on pace, they are dicking around with something it just may the way they look at data collection and hence improvement for this spec of car.

Let's assume for a second that the data they get with the 2008 wing (which, let's say, simulates the full 2009 package) is reliable.. then McLaren has posted the 2nd best time so far at Jerez, compared to the fastest car which we don't know the real pace of...

Is that good, or what??

I don't understand your last sentence, the point is they tested with both wings so it's useful for them, and I guess they can reliably do so, otherwise they would be running the 2008 wing for no reason... You can't expect the best 2009 wing ever being able to generate both 2009 optimal rear-wing performance AND diffuser performance.. that's where the 2008 wings comes in handy I guess..

IMO they're confident enough they're hiding something that isn't on the car yet, or they're already doing setup work or whatnot to go along with something that isn't even on the real car..

It would be interesting to know if any other teams carried there 2008-hybrid wings with them on the off chance that they might need them.

Look at McLaren first test, they took a altered 2008 wing with them that they new they was going to use, no, shit our 2009 wing is crap before its even run, lets quickly pop a 2008 wing on it, no, it was predetermined.

No, it's a reasonable point.

Ultimately, the wing+diffuser combo gives a certain amount of downforce in exchange for a certain amount of drag, so you can produce very similar Cd profiles with quite different aerodynamic setups. They aren't going to be spot on, and you wouldn't want to bet the world on them, but it's generally close enough for testing purposes - in this case, making sure you have enough rear grip to stress-test the KERS and develop profiles for loading and unloading it. It's possibly not something we're seeing from other teams as they either aren't planning radical changes for Melbourne, aren't going to be running KERS there, or aren't at stage with their KERS testing yet.

It is a bit of a gamble for Mclaren through, as the new diffuser arrangement will have different characteristics under braking and acceleration, being inherently more sensitive to pitch.

As to why they'd switch back to the 09-style wings, again, they have to see if they're behaving as per the simulations, both aerodynamically and physically. There was a photo of one of the 09 wings with a set of little gold foil squares on it's supports - these are strain gauges to see how much the supports are deflecting.

Whoa, that's pretty specific Cool

One main argument

If Mclaren was willing to showboat and hide they have built a dog, they would have been running with low fuel, no ballast etc. That's how many teams did back on the early 2000's and even what Mclaren did at 2004 pre-season testing (up until Australia Q1) when they broke Valencia's track record by 0.1 seconds every day until Raikkonen ran out of fuel on his in-lap on the last test.

What Mclaren has been doing is totally weird, I agree 100%. But I don't really think they are showboating, they are just doing something we've never seen.

Next Test for Mclaren: Jerez (March 9-12)

This is the only worry that I have - the team so far have had trouble controlling LH. I trully hope that he will not show too much of what the team has been trying to hide...

Femi, until you say at least a little bit more on what you know, everyone will say Mclaren is in deep trouble.

And I'm starting to wonder that something is not quite right at the moment.

The MP4-18 at it's best!

People can guess, assume and presume, but really most have no idea about what McLaren is "doing" (if anything at all), but I've always found that bookies/betting houses usually have good insider info to base their odds at, they seem to "know" about form etc. a lot earlier and more accurately than anyone. Some latest odds from centrebet

For the Aus GP 09:
Lewis Hamilton (McLaren) 2.38
Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari) 4.50
Felipe Massa (Ferrari) 5.00
Fernando Alonso (Renault) 6.00
Robert Kubica (BMW Sauber) 8.00
Nick Heidfeld (BMW Sauber) 17.00
Heikki Kovalainen (McLaren) 21.00
Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull) 21.00
Mark Webber (Red Bull) 67.00
Nelson Piquet Jr. (Renault) 81.00
Nico Rosberg (Williams) 81.00
Jarno Trulli (Toyota) 81.00
Timo Glock (Toyota) 101.00
Sebastien Buemi (Toro Rosso) 151.00
Sebastien Bourdais (Toro Rosso) 151.00
Kazuki Nakajima (Williams) 201.00
Adrian Sutil (Force India) 251.00
Giancarlo Fisichella (Force India) 301.00

F1 WDC:
Lewis Hamilton (McLaren) 2.75
Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari) 4.50
Felipe Massa (Ferrari) 5.00
Fernando Alonso (Renault) 6.00
Robert Kubica (BMW Sauber) 8.00
Heikki Kovalainen (McLaren) 21.00
Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull) 21.00
Nick Heidfeld (BMW Sauber) 26.00
Mark Webber (Red Bull) 67.00
Nelson Piquet Jr. (Renault) 81.00
Jarno Trulli (Toyota) 81.00
Timo Glock (Toyota) 101.00
Nico Rosberg (Williams) 101.00
Sebastien Bourdais (Toro Rosso) 151.00
Sebastien Buemi (Toro Rosso) 151.00
Kazuki Nakajima (Williams) 201.00
Adrian Sutil (Force India) 251.00
Giancarlo Fisichella (Force India) 301.00


If anyone was getting a whiff of something terribly wrong at McLaren, the bookies would be the first to show it. Hamilton has stayed at around mid to high 2s for the whole off season. Ferrari drivers have drifted out a bit, 4-5 for the expected main competitors are not short odds. Reflecting a bit of positivity from Red Bull, better than Toyota, with Vettel on the same money as Kova.

I respect what you are saying (or not saying ), but, we are so used to Ron's way of doing things, so, is this just that Martin is now conducting testing in the form that he wants to do it?

Intriguing. He's been under the press microscope for the past two years. I thought we knew everything there was to know about Hamilton. What have the team being trying to hide and why would it effect his speed in the car?

I really hope you're right and Lewis would just push it a bit too hard than he's told to. That would calm my nerves. TBH, I'm not convinced, if they really had an ace up the sleeve, it's time to test it on track.

I dont think Lewis would let them just be off the pace even if that does sound a bit funny, hes world champion, he doesnt want to be at the bottom of the time sheets, and maybe mclaren will bust out something special when he gets in the car?

Having the most advanced simulation facilities on the grid should give the team a degree of confidence that their design work is sound. If it has, does it not make sense to keep that design work secret up until the final test of the year - thus preventing those with less advanced in house simulation from testing the Mclaren solutions outside of race weekends? I'm still clinging to that hope....

What were the booking odds before 2004, if you remember?

And it's sure as hell those odds are not representative of performance. There is no way say Piquet has a better chance for winning than for example Glock lol.

Hamilton reported to be on the 08 wing.


now sht is just funny

OK from a post right here on Atlas from 1 march 2004

"sportsinteraction has MS on 2.75 to 1, JPM on 4 to 1, RS on 6.5 to 1, and KR on 7 to 1. I bet the BYN might (based on these figure and confidence in Williams/McLaren) for the first time since long perhaps have started without MS having the top bets, but I'm not that sure."

True it is very, very much based on past form, but having Kimi at 7 when he finished just behind MS, while JPM (Williams very strong in '03) still only 4 compared to MS at 2.75, tells me they knew all was not so good at McLaren. I can't find the odds they had for BAR and Renault for that season, that would be interesting to see.

As for Piquet less likely to win than Glock? That's a matter of opinion really. Piquet had some good drives last year, and Renault were last season, if anything, crafty and willing to take a good risk.

Time to panic boys

omg, has alonso re-signed for mclaren like?



yours, not panicking.....wrighty

If they are still mocking about come the last test at Barcelona I will start panicking. Until then I will just have a cookie or two.

I disagree. Betting odds dont need to have a clue about reality, they only need to know what people will play at which odd, and take their own from between.

It doesnt look very smooth for McLaren. I hope it isnt, Hamilton was gifted two perfect cars on his first years of F1, he needs to go trough some rough way now IMO.

I'm just worried about the crankshafts, if Hamilton's engine change is about that. It's a problem they've been trying to solve, evidently, and haven't been able to yet. If it stops them using kers, that will be a setback.

See, no drama

Kovaleinen on KERS:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/73541


I wonder if the fire today could count though, as something having gone dramatically wrong?

We don't know how old that engine was.

I'd go out on the limb and say that, yes McLaren are having troubles that are a cause for deep concern. The situation, at the moment, does not point to a picture of a team that has complete grip of the issues at hand. It is far too deep into the Winter Testing sessions to sweep into a general statement like "we are still evaluating the various bits". Sorry that doesn't cut mustard for me. Either they've gone on a horribly wrong path or they've come up with something complex which they are not able to come to grips. Just about every team is testing with their 2009 package and McLaren are still designing/manufacturing their diffuser? O.K, let us assume that they are just doing that. And what happens if they bring it out on track and find that it is a far worse solution than what they have currently on the car? OOPS, sorry we are just going to make the numbers this year but will mount an all out frontal attack for 2010?
All pointers are to a team in deep shit. Funny that this should happen with a car designed under Pat Fry's watch.

Are McLaren spending this winter developing their car or are they mostly developing (calibrating) their simulation software?

If a team is 100% dependant on track data to test the car (well they all have simulation software so lets say 70% dependant on track data), they will be "cut off" so to speak as soon as the season starts.. if a team isn't dependant on track data anymore and is 100% dependant on simulation data, then the inseason testing ban won't affect the car at all. So developing the simulation software, could be seen as investment for later in the season.

You look at teams like Renault and Williams and you can see clear aero changes that have been made based off feedback from the car on the track from previous tests. You look at McLaren and you see experiments and wierd testing strategies that have never been seen before. I don't know what they are up to, but maybe this could explain it.

If this is true, it would really be one of those wait and see until Melbourne things. Where it's actually 100% true. For most teams, you have to wait as well, but there is usually some kind of rough idea where they sit. You don't know exactly where they will be but you have a rough guess if it's a dog or not. For McLaren you can't say with certainty they have built a good car, for the same reason you can't say they have built a bad car. If it were Renault or Williams doing these things, everyone would think they are screwed but McLaren are a top team with high resources and won the WDC last year. So it's hard to picture them away from the front of the grid.

Probably wrong but just some random thoughts.

That's true Maybe just a test to destruction, let's hope.

Great news

I wonder if they put too much effort on KERS?
It´s good to have that system at Melbourne, as it gives further 1,5-3 tenth, but that doesn´t help much when the car itself is half a second per lap slower than the fastest :\

Reliability is sorted first. Performance second. Can't sort performance if it's not reliable.

Wasn't it RD who stated something along the lines of: "You can make a fast car reliable but you can't make a reliable car fast"?
The damned car could run 1000s of kilometers without a glitch or problem but what use if it gets lapped by the top 3 regularly?

For me this is the most reasonable analysis of the McLaren strategy yet.

makes sense.... with all the wierd things u see them doing in tests, it seems they are either just taking the piss or fine tuning simulation software since it is now so important.... or both:lol:. i doubt though you will go through that much effort to just take the piss and i highly doubt they will build a car slower than force india... in any case, we'll have to wait and see to know wassup

Well they came up with the MP4-19A in 2004.... If you can f**k up once ain't no reason why you can't f**k up again. Still, I hope they know what they are doing and more importantly nothing is amiss (which my heart says but my brain says, "yeah right" ;)

yea i hear u...but u gotta hope a team of their stature will have learnt from that miserable failure...

Chill dude. Have some faith.

Mclaren garage in Melbourne just before FP1. Whitmarsh opens the team briefing "Guys, I just read the latest data from Woking. Our simulator works perfectly well. Our CFD data is verified and is above all doubts correct. We also know exactly where other teams are, our testing program was a full success..."

[Everone claps, nods and smiles]

"..but it shows we're a full second off the pace"

[silence. someone whispers: what are the chances of FOTA allowing us to run 2008 rear wing till Monaco?]




Just kidding. On the positive side: 2009 brings a lot of changes so maybe there is nothing strange about Mclaren testing ideas being very different from what other teams have planned. There were no blueprints for 2009 so it might work out well for them. But if this it was their schedule from the beginning, it's an odd one: they will have very little time to fine-tune the 2009 wing+diffuser combo before Melbouirne. And if it turns out it needs more than just fine-tuning they'll be in deep troubles.