Have they unveiled it too early thou!!!???

We'll see what this does.

I still expect them to be off the pace. No magic floor can save them!

I also think that they would have tested the 08 rear wing again(for comparison), if there were real big problems with the 09 rear wing, diffusor or whatever...

Well if thats on the same fuel and track conditions were consistent, they have found 1.3 secs a lap with the new package! Thats pretty impressive.

Do I smell a whiff of unease

agree

Not really. I hope they find the pace as I think this season can be something special however, even with the floor they didn't do any decent running with it and at any speed.

We'll see what tommorow brings, others have yet to make major upgrades too.

So McLaren have surprised the pack with their new diffuser package:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/73642

It's pretty obvious (IMO) what they are doing. The lap times are low because the team don't want to display the true potential of this part. If they set a stunning time today then the other capable teams would copy. However - if they set a "poor" time then it keeps the likes of Ferrari guessing. Would Ferrari waste time copying a part that they didn't know the full potential of? What if the part turned out to be a duff and the time was a full reflection of the Mp4-24's time? That's the point - nobody knows!
Of course today's time may well have been really awful and the car a dog but it's my guess that the car is full of ballast/fuel and that they are judging performance from already pre defined base lines from earlier tests.
Ever the optimist!





DISCLAIMER: The above post is pure and informed speculation and guess work. Please don't ask me to prove it LOL!

Or
'We-were-away-when-the-track-was-faster'.

"The better the basic set-up that you've found in the simulator, the later you can go out on track on a Friday of a GP weekend. You can then start using your sets of tyres when the grip levels have already become representative. Equally, there's no need to first produce wishbones and struts (for example) before you find out whether they'd be a good solution"...

An organisation such as Mclaren with the most sophisticated simulation program in F1 is hardly in need of saving is it!

Everything is planned and as the season progresses with limited on track testing the simulator will be the most important piece of kit for a team to have.

They were not caught off guard. Mclaren had developed a car with flexibility in mind. Try and to back to what was said at the launch.

The new floor? I think no. Their main rivals have only 3 testing days back, and 'to realize an inspiration' is not that easy and requires a lot of times. If some teams will follow this, they might come up with theirs on the first European GP the soonest.

Wtf,
McLaren needs a holy butt.

did no one else notice the new exhaust outlets in this picture? they've changed ALOT. And i like them.

I don't quite get what allen is saying about macca testing different rear wings because the diffuser is duff. We all know the diffuser is basic and will be upgraded regardless of whether it brings performance. The wait is killing me, I just hope its worth it and we are atleast the quickest of the merc engined cars.

We did. Read previous posts.

That is the $64,000 question (not adjusted for inflation).

I'm wondering if the McLaren is better suited for this floorboard "triangle-cutout" than the other cars. Would the Ferrari or BMW be able to do this with a similar benefit?

Perhaps the McLaren profile and silouette allow it to take advantage of this unique loophole. It's hard for me to judge the car's shape, but the McLaren appears to be taller and narrower at the end (allowing for a larger triangle-cutout). As is usual, any comments/corrections are appreciated.

Exactly. Until they fit the new diffuser, we don't know anything. Wednesday?

The new diffuser is yet to come, IMO, the new floor and top body is only part of that new package.

Any chance anyone can point to the new 'top body'. I always find that sometimes a team points to something new on the car and i can hardly notice the difference. Would the top body be referring to the new exhaust outlets.

Today's programme:

[www.mtv3.fi] (translation)

Kovalainen granted: We are not there, where should!

McLaren driver, Heikki Kovalainen admits that English team MP4-24 car's performance has so far droven winter tests of the expectations.

On Monday, the Barcelona tests, Kovalainen was among ten driver the slowest.

- We have of course been wrong from the result list. We are not quite there, where should, but all the time goes forward. The car has improved quite a lot of days during the period of this a few weeks during the run. Just the right direction is going. Yes, I think that the time for the big improvements are still coming. Then we seen in Australia, where it is enough, Kovalainen commented for MTV3 Monday.

http://premium.f1-live.com/f1/photos-hires...2/diapo_141.jpg

The new top body means the new exhausts and related stuff on the top of the rear end.

Heh, the exhaust outlets of the Macca make it look like an F-15 eagle, my favourite plane ^^

This new exhaust looks awesome.

What about with a sprinkling of magic beans too?

Really? I prefer the original launch exhausts, these seem a lot more in your face even thou cooling will probs be more effective.

I'm think these will go through another change, maybe they will have race by race changes.

As mentioned by someone else, the sidepod entrances seem quite a big bigger, as the revs have come down the engine must need less cooling so we must be looking at a lot of cooling required for Kers?

They are also symmetrical, I wonder if the uneven sidepods of last year will make an appearance or not?

yes it does, but it is a detail, unfortunately.

The thing of floor sounds more interesting... :yawn:

My bet is that some of the air is going straight through the sidepods to the rear, not doing any cooling, to feed the rear aero.

It looks like the car is in a odd condition, too large air intake for the both side pods, strange looking dali-banana nose, huge double cylinder air out lets,... It all look a like a car made out of ingenious engineering but with no over all concept, nice details but missing a great integration... RBR looks much more of a clean cut racing car in a way.

I never thought the old ones looked very Aero efficient, they had a big block at a very hard angle to the air.

Its Kovalainen big forehead that is acting like a wing and moving the downforce ahead, hurting the balance of the car.
Lewis had no problems with it.

It sure looks that way.

I can't wait to see the diffuser. Wednesday?

femi was saying towards the end of this test. Don't know if he has any particular info, but surely it can't be much later.

I think that today was the last day that they would use the old wing + old floor as a benchmark and from tomorrow they would start doing set up work for the new parts, and then in jerez next week they will run with the definitive melbourne configuration with the diffuser and whatever else they are gonna put on there and look for the best set up's for albert park

That might be the case, but I think it's unlikely. Air is a lot like electricity, it takes the path of least resistance. If you have a pipe and split it 50/50 halfway down, with a clear path on one side and a radiator on the other, most of the air would take the clear path - working out a balanced solution for split ducts is pretty complicated, and was a minor part of the reason that F1 cars moved away from the bifurcated sidepod radiator/engine intakes we saw in the 80's to the overhead engine intakes we have today.

I think it's more likely that these shrouded exhaust ducts are the new version of the chimneys that were standard in F1 for so long. In this implementation, the hot air from the radiators and the hot air from the exhausts is being mixed and used to drive the rear wing, aided by the clever design of the toed-in wing supports, steering the flow to the bottom . The effect is rather like having a jet engine blowing over the bottom of the wing, speeding the airflow.

The really interesting thing we've seen today is the notched floor. With the heavily waisted sidepods we've seen this year, some parts of the area above the floor behind the sidepod have likely become somewhat marginal in terms of downforce generation, possibly even to the point of generating lift. Adding a notch here and allowing the flow to mix could cancel out this effect nicely, especially if you have a powerful diffuser acting on the center of the undertray.

Although it appears to be a simple notch, it's actually somewhat more complicated - and clever. If you look, the rear of the 'notch' is higher than the front, acting as a tiny splitter and guiding part of the sidepod flow under the floor. A small flip-up has been placed just in front of the tire - in effect, turning the raised part of the floor behind the notch into a small winglet. I'm not sure what the FIA will say about this, but it appears to be legal - the raised part of the floor acting as a splitter counts as being part of the 'step plane' allowed 50mm above the main reference plane and isn't counted as part of upper bodywork.

I'd just be a bit surprised if they risked the weather at Jerez, if it's bad and they hadn't run the complete Melbourne car at Barca they'd be turning up at the first race with no dry setups. Well, setups made up from 08 wing/09 floor and so on.

From reading different fora, it seems the only people not panicking is mclaren guys. There is alot of speculation and guess-work going on. I for one do believe that this team will be contending for the championship this year. I dont have proof, but the way they seem so cool in face of all this doom-sayers points to confidence in what they have got

Killfile, if it is a good useful design which the other teams may or may-not have, how long would it take the other teams to implement something similar? would such an idea take a lot of working out to perfect?

Very interesting stuff thanks

I can't wait to see the afterburners in action
As long the rear wing doesn't get incinerated, the opposition won't be able to get close enough to overtake!

+1

Y olé!!!! Great Stuffff Thanks Killfile

It's a pretty trick solution and would need integration into the overall aero concept, so it's not a simple job by any means. If this is a purely Mclaren-only innovation and has to be copied, it's possible that a team with enough R&D resources - say Ferrari or BMW - could have it for Melbourne, but it'd be a risk and it'd be at the expense of whatever they have planned themselves.

Of course, all the teams have the same set of rules, so it's entirely possible someone else has independently come up with the idea and will deploy it at the next test.

I dont think that most teams can get it to work so easily because the rules state that the floor must be flat and no part of the car visible from below. All the other teams have more "flowing" sidepods and they would be in the way when you look at the car from underneath it. That is probably why Mclaren made the sidepods so chubby at the front and so tight at the end.

+1 More!

Yeah, I'd read that, and wasn't able to be previous years due to winglets, but with sidepods like ferraris that are so tight, you'd think they'd have the space availabe to implement something similar?


Well, with

Long fuel runs

Stop and slowing on the striaghts

Slightly New diffusers, wings, etc

And a trick floor

Things have started to get more interesting...

It'll be even more interesting seeing what prezzies tomorrow will bring?

A brand new Diffuser?

The only problem is, that there is no next test (at least not this year) for the majority of the teams.
IIRC only Renault, Williams and Macca have a session left in Jerez next week.

EDIT: and BrawnGP