Find another team to root for before the season has even started ......!

Typical fair weather supporter...I bet you supported Reanult 2 years ago ....

WTF? You think Mercedes will drop McLaren as fickle as that? You have to be joking.

Because he owns a team...

I dont understand why people are talking like Mclaren are going to get as many points as force India this season. They have tested through the winter (just)and havent been giving good results, SO WHAT! They still have another week to do if i remember rightly and also it is the same every year with teams playing the 'look at us we arent very good this winter, blah, blah, blah'
We will all just have to wait and seewhat happens on the 29th March that will be the true teller of all reliabilty etc. We will see if Mclaren are sandbagging, struggling and if brawn are going to be a pocket rocket or just another damp squid!

It's way too soon to write off the car for this year. They only need to find something like 0.8 seconds, with such a young car and 5 days of testing that could easily be done. And a new diffuser is still more likely than not.

Don't Mercedes have a 40 percent stake in McLaren?

Not to mention a shared history dating back to 1996.

There's no way they'd be dropped for producing one poor car, if in fact that turns out to be the case.

That wouldn't soothe the wounded soul of a certain Alonso supporter still reliving 2007 every night

No, they need to find 0.8 seconds more that everyone else is going to find before Melbourne.

Thanks for understanding my point, although I will not stop supporting McLaren at all. This is not what I said. In my dearest wishes, I'd love the team to win every race if possible, but judging from the tests, they might not even win one at all. As for supporting other teams, yes, supporting deserving teams but it does not mean that I will stop supporting or care for McLaren. It just gives another opportunity to enjoy even more Formula 1.


What is extremely painful is the fact that Brawn GP is thrashing McLaren at the moment. Sandbag, media laps or "quest for sponsors" or not, BGP are looking pretty strong at the moment and it pains me to see that McLaren took so many bad decisions (as they appear to be so far) with the budget and the supposed "great technical staff" they have. My bet is that McLaren will start suffering from Newey's departure (as much as I did not want this to ever happen).



No. In 2005, I was entirely rooting for Kimi and Montoya (my "dream" lineup). In 2006, I was ultimately rooting for the most deserving guy out there, and of course for an eventual McLaren win. Kimi deserved a couple of them, and Montoya pissed the hell out of me. I cheered for Alonso the minute I knew he signed a contract with McLaren for 2007 onwards.

Anyway, ...

http://premium.f1-live.com/f1/photos-hires...1/diapo_194.jpg

Back of the car today

Yeah I've been talking a lot about Mc being bad this winter, but that reaction is a little extreme.

Well Ferrari, Toyota and BMW are almost though their testing, how much more time are you expecting them to find? What do you think Brawn have left to find?

That certainly looks different.

This is something new, debuted today.

That still cant be the finished article though

Updated;

This is from the third day of Barcelona testing (11.03.2009)

i bet you were a.............

farrari fan up untill 2005
renault fan 2005-2006
mac fan 2007-2008
'the fastest team' fan 2009 beyond........

currently a man u fan cos they won tonight
real madrid fan untill they get rid of van nistelroy and zidane

you get the picture!

Indeed it looks wierd. :\

Any particular reason why not ?

They still belieeeeeevvvvvvvveeeeee (or rather wishful thinking/hoping for a miracle)

What's that white line?

But it's a sign, they touched the diffuser, so it wasn't a final version till now.

Its a British public message poster from WW2. Saw it on a market stall in central London recently and though it summed us Brits up pretty well whilst the bombs were dropping. That its in McLaren rocket red is a complete coincidence

Its the same diffuser thats just a reflection

They're probably making room for upper diffuser section ala Williams style.

Looks even stranger from this angle

http://www.pitpass.com/images/galleries/20...namar9_s150.jpg

im quessing we will see the new one next week not before, but im pretty sure we will se one

Times from three days of testing;

day 1
01:22.948 (Heikki)

day 2
01:21.991 (Heikki)

day 3
01:21.657 (Lewis)

1,5 sec improvement.

its crazy before the last test, people are not just writing off their whole season, they are writing off Mclaren Mercedes as a partnership, all off testing times....do you guys realize just how ridiculous you sound?


even if Brawn GP is faster this year than the Mclaren...Mclaren will still be a much more solid and stable investment for Mercedes, they are the closest thing to Ferrari in F1 in terms of longevity and consistency. They even recently surpassed Ferrari in global fanbase according to a recent poll which bodes well for sponsorship money. though im guessing they will lose a couple of mkay type fairweather fans if they perform poorly this year.


Atleast wait till testing is over...all the gloating n overreaction has become rather sad now

Means nothing unless they stick it on pole in melbourne.

-Maybe there's more rubber in the tarmac...
-Maybe EVERYONE improved their times...

Maybe everyone was having a shit...

This is comedy gold my friend. If your team go through a bad patch you root for them even more, you dont start rooting for other teams

The team have let you down? I didnt know they had to answer to you :\
How long have you actually been a fan of Mclaren?

Oh yeah, just one more point: the season hasnt actually started yet so i would withold judgement for the time being. I for one am not gonna wirte Mclaren off just yet.

I take it you're not Australian, then?

Seriously, what are some of you guys smoking right now? I would like to try it out. It must be really good since some of you are suggesting that Mercedes, the prestigious german car maker, can't start their own Formula 1 team if they want to so they need to go out and buy a Formula 1 team which was abandoned by a Japanese car maker, Honda. Yeah right, that would be a really good idea for marketing

New parts so far:

Front Wing:
http://premium.f1-live.com/f1/photos-hires...7/diapo_180.jpg

Exhaust:
http://www.imagesforme.com/out.php/i390862_exacover.jpg

Floor:
http://premium.f1-live.com/f1/photos-hires...2/diapo_140.jpg
http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6957/1236629142.jpg

Diffusor:
http://premium.f1-live.com/f1/photos-hires...1/diapo_194.jpg

Rear Wheel cover:
http://www.f1today.nl/fotos/741tkzyl9.jpg

Rear Wing:
http://premium.f1-live.com/f1/photos-hires...7/diapo_168.jpg

thanks for the info.

Indeed there are some similarities between ordinary british citizens during WW2 and McLaren supporters today. Nothing else to do but carry on regardless and hope for the best.

Then again, even a no-points season for McLaren might not be conisered quite as serious as someone bombing your city.

bogi, thanx for tis image. I am sorry if this was already knows to everyone, but to me this is the first time...

This is interesting, look at the front end of the center section if the diffuser, the part that meets flat floor...



You see that the start of the center section has some kind o scoop opening, you see the tiangular cut on is profile.
The center section of the diffuser is lower because it has opening towards the upside of the diffuser. Mclaren trid similar solution like toyota and williams just with no ceiling... This did not work right, as they are keep changing.

It seems that the biggest problem of Mclaren is on their floor. ONly thing they did not tried yet seems to me a bloody conventional diffuser design...

McLaren maths? It's still only 1,3 sec in real world numbers...

day 1
A. Sutil 1:22.452

day 2
A. Sutil 1:21.834

day 3
G. Fisichella 1:21.545

Then again, they improved by 4 tenths more than Force India. All is not lost.

In this one it looks like they are trying to close the upper part
http://www.imagesforme.com/out.php/i385182_001.jpg

Well, were heading towards the end of the Barc test, just one day left and atleast you are right, McLaren has left people scratching there heads.

Lets hope they end a bit of confusion tomorrrow

I don't think I am able to get over how biblically ignorant and outright stupid some posters are on this forum .

This used to be a fantastic place to get tidbits of excellent information, but most of the punters on here nowadays probably have an average age of 13 and are having some real problems dealing with puberty, it seems.

To me it seems like McLaren have suspension problems in the back instead of aero problems because all the times that they have spun out in training it has been in low speed corners and also it confirms with what JA's has said about them not accelerating out of the corners as quickly as the other cars.

Maybe it's been addressed already but that hole would seem to be where the starter motor is inserted.

Even as Ferrari supporter, I have to agree. It's foolishness to write off McLaren, especially before the season even started. Even if they might be slow to start with (and that remains to be seem), they don't have the same troubles they had with MP4-18.

It all depends on where their current 'problems' are.

Ron Dennis latest comments from yesterday as they appeared on autosport news, seemed to me rather there to confuse people. His explanation on the use of 2008 wing doesn't make any good sense, unless they are confident that their car will work as planned with the 2009 wing. His comment on other teams finalizing their testing is true. Still other teams will not stop working next week. So we have to wait for Melbourne.

As always, the build up to a new season is exciting. Would be boring if we could predict the champions even before the season starts. The more question marks there are, the better.

It looks like Alonso's influence at Mclaren was so strong that it carried them for a year after he left. With the new regulations they seems lost and Hamiltons development handy work has resulted in them proping up the rear of the testing grid. Looks like a painful season ahead for them. Pay back I guess.

Please tell me you don't honestly believe that.

People here smoke some good stuff or maybe this?

What a layman!

Pull your head out of your ass gary.

quick.. buy out FA's contract, that 6 tenths would sure be handy lol

On the bright side.....

Hamilton was seemingly on a long run yesterday, with a large amount of fuel and with hard tyres. He spun off after eleven laps but looking at the stint times, it seemed he's been on the same fuel load for at least 19. And the times were pretty consistent and pretty quick given the fuel load. Certainly on a par with all but the top two or three runners out there.

The worrying thing was the drop off in performance for the two laps prior to the spin. The tyres seem to be OK in the photos so what caused that?

I suppose it's a bit late, but any chance we can try to keep this thread about the car, and not feed the usual suspects' sad trolling?