Originally posted by Owen
[B]McLaren Stake Everything On Jerez
Thursday 12th March 2009
"Sandbagging" was a term beloved of Mark Blundell. Come the Australian GP in Melbourne each year, the fabled ITV pundit would give us his cheeky cockney wink, refer to a surprisingly slow team and say "I fink they're sandbagging Jim/Steve". Renault were the alleged sandbaggers of 2008. But they got so good at it, that they sandbagged their way through the first five or six rounds of the championship, too.
This year, all eyes are on McLaren. After three days of the all-important Barclona test they have managed to come conclusively bottom, slowest runner of all on two days and second from bottom on Tuesday.
Reports from the track suggest that the new car lacks rear-end grip and that Kovalainen was taking a lot longer to get onto the power after corners than the front-runners. The innate tendency of the new cars in 2009 is to oversteer - the reason being that grippy, slick front tyres give the car far more front end grip than they had in 2008 and the smaller, comedy rear wings don't keep them glued down at the back.
The result is tail-happy cars and ones that are less stable under braking. Even though Lewis Hamilton is a master of oversteer, all that sliding is going to degrade the tyres and lap times will fall off. It's clear to everyone in the pitlane during testing that Mclaren have been having problems with the rear end of their car - not least because they've continued to experiment with the 2008 rear wing at times. And the speculation has got so intense that now Ron Dennis (strangely not new team principal Martin Whitmarsh) has felt the need to comment.
"Whatever performance level McLaren have today we will be a competitive racing team," he told the BBC. "The objective is to go to Australia and be the most competitive car there, not to come out of every single test at the top of the timesheets. Testing is about a disciplined approach to making the car go faster and you have to ignore the performance of the other teams." "Whereas our main competitors are finishing testing in two days we still have the ability to test next week in Jerez. When we get to Australia that will be the first measurement of everyone's performance.
Denying that the team has problems with the 2009 aerodynamic package, he said: "We ran the 2008 rear wing because it was more relevant in its performance to the wing that we are going to have in Australia. It doesn't mean you are lost or that you don't know what you are doing." And now for the quote that will have Mark Blundell sitting on the edge of his new DFS sofa. "We had a strategy for this year to leave it to the last possible moment to produce our aerodynamic package for the Australian Grand Prix," said Ron. "That in itself gave us some production challenges and we have really only started to run the car in the last day with the Australian aero package."
So, if that is the case, then on the final day of testing we should see the McLaren begin to creep up the time sheets. What's more, if Ron's careful calibration of the testing programme is correct, then all of the mechanical stuff is in place, it's just the visible aero tweaks that they're going to pull out of the bag (to borrow a much-loved pundit's phrase).
Jerez is where it's really going to hit the fan. Last year BMW had a pretty average testing programme, but in the final few days came on like the title challenger they proved to be. Renault have shown - with Nelson Piquet slowest one day and Fernando Alonso fastest the next - that testing is not a true reflection of GP pace. And it's very unlikely that the McLaren Mercedes team will be the slowest of the Mercedes runners.
What's more, the resurgent Brawn GP team has shown that you can design a car for a different engine and gearbox, strap a new one in and top the timesheets in only three days of testing. McLaren can do exactly the same in Jerez next week.
Wonder what the weather forecast's like...?
from planet-f1.com
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Looks like it's sh*t or bust then. Gulp. [/B]
The MP4-24 is a bust and that reality is slowly sinking in for all McLaren fans. As to how bad the situation is to be seen; maybe the KERS is the saving grace. As someone mentioned it would really give an opportunity for LH to show his mettle.
if he uses this term then we are dead 
Early days! Did someone forget to tell him that the season starts in about two week?! Who's he trying to kid?
