dude the reason for running engine in low is due to KERS ( as someone posted here in this forum before )
it was causing too much vibrations and damaging the engine!

And Brawn GP is not running KERS !
and they just use that engine, rest everything is home built
and there is lot more to the performance of car, than just an engine.

For the first time this week the car has broken into the 1:20's: a 1:20:869 A previous best lap time of 1:21:045 was set on an 8-lap run.

ahh ok thanks

yes lets get the b-version

Dude supposedly causing vibrations. Heiki said Kers had been running trouble free all day.
turning the engine down is much more likely to do with conserving a single engine for testing due to the restrictions this year. They don't need to run the engine at max power during testing...to what ends?

F1today.nl thinks it was a short run with almost empty fuel tank to that Hamilton could get to know how the car reacts. If that's true then MP4-24 is damn slow so far.

Nice

lol this is the full quote


Hamilton faster

16:05 - Hamilton appears at the end of the day to see how fast the McLaren is a little fuel on board. The Briton has improved his time of 1:21.045 to 1:20.869. This is the team no longer ondraan the list, but on the seventh position. This week, the McLaren is still no quick time. Perhaps the team with a heavy car tested, but it is also likely that the team wants to know how the car reacts when the tank is nearly empty. The McLaren team seem to have problems with the downward pressure on the back and stability. It is interesting to see if Hamilton or his car this afternoon with an empty tank later in time lists can get.


like i said, haters/fans will spin whatever info they get to suit em....

Yeah utter bullshit and translated by google which makes it even more tripe

Haug on f1total.com

"Wir sind keineswegs dort, wo wir sein wollen", räumte Norbert Haug ein. "Wir haben in der nächsten Woche noch einmal vier Testtage vor uns. Dabei wollen wir uns steigern", sagte der Mercedes-Sportchef. Die aktuellen Probleme hat man im schwäbisch-britischen Topteam allerdings bereits erkannt: "Es fehlt insgesamt sicher an Abtrieb", meinte Haug. "Das Auto verhält sich grundsätzlich nicht schlecht, wir sind aber derzeit eindeutig zu langsam."

"We are no way near, were we want to be", Norbert Haug admitted. "We have 4 more testdays next week, and we want to increase our level of competiveness", said Haug. The problems has already been identified. "we need more downforce" haug said, "The car actually behaves pretty well, its just to slow"

eek.

Guys, Jerez has to be special, otherwise I hope you have some (actually a truckload) lager ready, to wash the pain away ...

What happened Femi, anymore inside scoops?

I do think McLaren have some hidden pace, did they do any low fuel runs? They still appear to be struggling though.

Here comes my delivery for Melbourne:

[img]http://www.truckpartsetc.com/beer_truck.bmp[/img]

Your registration date says everything...

http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/formel1...am-1017481.html

Sounds bad.

It's the same basic Haug comment, which he said to the German Bild.
http://www.bild.de/BILD/sport/motorsport/2...am-wie-nie.html

Just that latter one is coloured to be darker by the journalist. I'm not sure it's 100% original, as it seems to be derived from the Bild one, which is the original interview.

no i think the f1total article is a copy of auto.motor.und sport. Which is a lot more trustworthy

There's no way Hamilton and the MP 4/24 could only produce a two tenths improvement once in qualifying trim. I mean, he did a 1.21 flat at the end of a stint, and was supposed to be doing a qualifying simulation when he set that 1.20.8. If that at all was a Q-sim it was for Q3.
McLaren are certainly not where they want to be, or is expected to be, but they're not close to two seconds off the pace, no way.

I think come Melbourne they will be a tenth or so off Ferrari and further behind Brawn.

exactly.....

I'm just quoting this.

I honestly have no clue where to place McLaren relative to other teams.
Sure thing is that they won't be on the first row.

If even Dennis and Haug talk about 'not being where they want to be', things look rather bad.
Knowing McLaren PR in the past, being honest about their (bad) form is not a thing they normally do.

What wonders me as well is where Martin Whithmarsh is? Isn't he the new team leader?
Shouldn't it be him talking to the press instead of Dennis?

He's busy to get US GP back.
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/73679

That's normal, the press is more interested in asking Dennis.

Anyway Martin would say exactly what Ron has said.

As for the slight improvements in time, are the weather conditions exact the same than yesterday? It all comes into play.

Also let's not forget, we might see differences because of ambient temperature .When it was hot, McLaren seemed to excel last year. I wonder how that is going to work out this year.

Whithmarsh uses his time better to work, than to entertain journos.

Agree, they never did a Q lap but where are they though? It seems not close to the top. And the midfield is such a blur. Definately a big disappointment after last years success, but maybe they can bounce back quickly into the season.

If there is not a new diffuser in Jerez, you can add mine to the pile of hats to be eaten

Brawn GP may've gone about their testing with a set-up optimized for Barcelona, whereas McLaren (and others) may've gone for a set-up biased more towards a different track. Teams sometimes do this, even if the given test-track only has two or three corners similar to the one they're testing for, if you see what I mean.
If pushed to put my finger on a more specific gap, I think the differences shown when running longer stints, could be representative. An easy answer one could say, as the gap has been smaller then, but then again I don't think that Brawn GP are alone at the top, let alone one second clear.

...and regardless of where they are in Melbourne; half a second off a fuel-adjusted pole or as much as 1.5 second plus, McLaren will shrink the gap race by race.

Is it worth the effort to bring a "gray area" diffuser into the mix now when Briatore is getting ready to protest

But Brawn GP's times were set in Q2 simulation.

Massa's 1:20,16x and Kubica's 1:20,2xx are probably Q3 simulations which would indicate McLaren about 0.6-0.7s behind them.

I don't see the Toyota & Williams as "grey area diffusers" as Charlie Whiting has already approved them. The Brawn 001 I'm not sure of. One thing I do know is just looking at the pics of the different diffusers, McLaren's looks rudimentary in comparison.

Massa says otherwise.

So with Haug's new quotes, we're getting conflicting info. He says the car is behaving fine, which contradicts all the reports coming out stating that the rear is unstable. It's still slow though, which remains a fairly key factor...

Well, Jerez would appear to be the final hope for an improvement of fortunes. Today's time was at least respectable, albeit with unknown fuel, but an apparent progression nonetheless. Maybe at Jerez, the team will discover what they have been searching for. The Legend. The Deific Device. Justice itself. The Grail. The DiffUber.

At least it appears clear now that the car, as it stands, is not a frontrunner.

Link?

Well it's a point, but I'd bet they're making a double-decker *and* a refined single-decker.

My feeling is with 3 teams and Max/Charlie saying the double-decker complies, they'll probably be passed, so I reckon the team will want to cover that possibility. It seems to be worth too much performance to ignore.

I've lost almost all faith...

I've been there for around 45 minutes, watching the cars brake at the end of the back straight and Hamilton's car didn't seem to have any clear problem (I could only see him for 5 or 6 laps).

The absolutely worrying thing for me was that, at almost the end of the session, he did two laps and came into the pits just a couple of minutes before the end. I then moved to the terrace over the pits to have a look at the cars practicing the start procedure. My surprise came when I suddenly saw Hamilton coming into the pits again and, from my position, I could clearly see two things: first of all, he was using the floor without the triangular cut and secondly, the team had flow-viz'ed the top of the floor and the back of the sidepod. Something like this (more or less) :

Call this clutching at straws, or pulling an idea out of a silver lined cloud, but might the problem be KERS?

I'm reading reports of poor traction, inconsistent stint times, high tyre wear, engine stresses, instability under braking, engine sounds awful.... might all this be solved by actually pulling KERS off and moving the weight forward as ballast? Surely they must have a contingency plan in the event that KERS turned out to be a 'curse' ( excuse the lame pun) rather than a weapon.

Maybe the plan is to use pre-season testing not just to ensure their off-track development facilities can carry them through the season but also to work out the bugs in the KERS device. Maybe it's unfixable and the car with the thing removed will be a second a lap quicker. Or even two seconds if you want to be optimistic.

Every time I watch that Heikki/Kimi start and hear the howl as the Mp4-24 seems to miss a gear and just stop accelerating as the F60 shoots past I wonder if the KERS button is their secret sandbagging device....

Don't see why thats worrying its not like they havn't being doing all week long, they could again be calibrating a different part.

guess the mp4/24 will eventually end up like this:


(image from Alice Dark Photography)

Cheers for the info Aren, much appreciated.

As to the flow-viz, I guess that's generally considered as a synonym for Evil around here nowadays. When was that floor debuted? Couple of days back? I'd have thought they'd have done all the simulation validation or whatever already by now...but I guess it could be that still.

Also interesting about the stability thing, do all the rumours of bad stability emanate from a single source or have they all witnessed it?

The fact that CW has approved them is utterly meaningless. There are numerous examples of CW approving something, only for the FIA to then overrule him.

Give me a link to your speculation that is was "probably" Q3 runs?

Here's my link. Now please provide yours.

I would imagine that if these 3 start to pull away and ferrari has a normal diffuser then they might be looked at to equalise things out.

So true

Hahahhahahah, that's a nice one

There's no a single quote of Massa just pure Allen's speculation. He doesn't know how much fuel Massa or Kubica had, he doesn't say which compound they used. Absolutely nothing apart from pure guessing and speculating. It could be Q2, Q3 or short run with full fuel tank.

"Massa says otherwise" - does he? I don't think so.

Welcome to the FIA

Please provide your link to Ferarri and BMW being on a Q3 lap.

Massa has been quoted on these boards saying the Brawn's times are "unreachable", and that Brawn are ahead of everyone else. Read back in the testing thread a bit.

No, I asked you first to provide me link with Massa's quote, and you didn't. I wrote probably, you wrote "Massa says...". Be careful with your words other time.