Hm, the MP4/24 has the cockpit further in the back than the other two cars. I thought we'd need even more weight in the front with the slicks. Might they have found a way to get the front tires get working better or why are they doing it?

The Toyota car has room for the KERS without getting bulkier. They said its a small device.

How do you know that if the only car we've seen so far in action was F60? What a ridiculous statement, everyone can have own opinion man.

no, they kind of said they will fit kers when it will be small enough

hahahahahahahahaha stop it or I'll die laughing

Interesting tech overview - http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/72822

Says the "bulkier" sidepods are designed with aero in mind, not to accomodate a big KERS system. Also states that it looks the most advanced of the three seen thus far.

Shows what we all know then...

Yeah, maybe thats it, they didn't release a very clear message last year.

Howett said last November: "Fundamentally we will have a car that will run KERS, but it will be very difficult to race. That is all I am prepared to say, and we would have to modify it to be able to race."

"It is very unlikely that the first race we will have a safe and reliable KERS that will add performance benefit, I am not saying that after some time it won't, but there are some pretty big issues. Bear in mind batteries have thermal meltdown.

"We believe we have a very good system and we have it under control, but safety is an important issue for us."

also "We will run a car in January with KERS in a monocoque not designed for it, which we could not race, but it will be a test platform - and our gut feeling is that the earliest will be mid season. We don't know yet. We are still testing on rigs.

"So it is not that we are not going to race it. Just our position is different from some other teams who believe it will be an instant in."

Seems safety still an issue and he gave a reply that was not the clearest.

Apologies, I thought people might appreciate being made aware of a respected journalist's view. I must have also imagined all the talk earlier of the car being "simple" and "basic".

That is a ridiculous suggestion. Obviously you have no idea what you are talking about.

Perhaps not as silly as you suggest... if they can't get heat into the front tyres then they won't bite and they will push wide... because it 'appears' that the weight of the McLaren is further back then the other two, but how do we know? its all conjecture... we'll see come testing and the races i guess.

It is the whole point of the airbox since they were invented. You show me evidence that this is banned, please, because you won't find any...

That it does have bargeboards....

Good news is that they now have 2 chassis ready. One currently in Woking, the other one already in Portugal.

Does that mean it will be more naturally prone to oversteer?

How do you know that they aren't hiding 40kgs of ballast in that big nose?
I am sorry, but just because the rear end APPEARS more bulky than the Ferrari/Toyota solution does not mean that there is more weight towards the rear. Obviously, we all know that if you put the centre of aerodynamic pressure and the weight forwards then you will end up with a car more likely to oversteer. But haven't you considered that there is a huge reduction in downforce thanks to the new rules which affects the REAR of the car more than the front?? If Mclaren have moved the weight distribution backwards, which I highly doubt, especially since the cockpit is further back (allowing for more space for ballast at the front), then they would be definitely going down the wrong philosphical route.

Quality. Don't suppose you could add to this pic for each launch could you... to unanimous approval!

But nevertheless they only can drive with one car at Portugal.

Maca good looking but after 22 and 23 we hope to see awesome car - but 24 is not awesome.
And what about nose? It looks a little bit strange. And nosecon too. Overall curve is not so smooth - nose con like an alien element. If they hurry or what?

And interesting - team who stilled ferrari's technology show us only 2 promo shots - what does they try to hide? It's a little bit ridiculous too.

In common very poor presentation. Ferrari and Toyota presents cars much better.

No. In a road car with no downforce, if you put all of the weight at the back, the tyres won't be able to handle it and will break traction easier, resulting in oversteer (also wearing out the rears faster, especially in a RWD car). A great example of this is the old 911s. Then imagine putting the weight in the front, on a FWD car, and the car will understeer, because the tyres won't be able to take the weight, and will break traction before the rears, also wearing them out faster. Any FWD SUV with a big engine in the front will do this.

However, if you put the aero pressure at the point where the weight is, then in fact you reverse the situation. For example, the 2006 Renault had a very rearwards aero pressure and weight bias, working the rears harder whilst at the same time giving the rear end more downforce, resulting in lightning acceleration and straightline grip, but at the same time understeer (which suited FA). If you look at the 2008 Mclaren, the weight was forwards, but so was the aero pressure (I imagine), so that the car oversteered more. This warms up the tyres faster, but also wears out the fronts a bit, a problem Mclaren had last year.

There's really no need to say something like that. Prick.

+1, I'd like to see some more comparison shots from the same angles for every car.

An interesting bit about those: the Toyota nose seems WAY shorter than the other 2 cars!

McLaren has a very distinctive rear wing, quite weird even, it's almost 2 wings in 1.

McLaren had a very good looking car. It looks great from the front unlike the Ferrari. I am surprised by how bulky it looks though. It will change though no doubt.

Why post a stupid one liner with absolutely no knowledge of how an F1 car behaves? And I don't think abusing me is exactly the right attitude. Can you not just acknowledge the fact that your suggestion was lacking in both evidence and any kind of respectable reason?
Or are you just going to sink to the level of name-calling?

How do you know any better? What evidence do you have to the contrary? I prefixed my statement with the word 'maybe', suggesting I don't -know-.

Still, I'm interested to know how you apparently know better.

absolutely the best pic so far in my opinion
http://premium.f1-live.com/f1/photos/2009/...n/diapo_187.jpg

Frankly, I resorted to name-calling because I'm fed up of being surrounded by people like you who think they know everything and bad mouth others trying to contribute. Where actually, you're just a troll.

Just noticed the McLaren is the only car with HUGE numbers. Guess why.

the diffuser has been covered

In my gap year I worked at an Aerospace company in Germany and was part of the windtunnel personnel. I therefore studied Aerodynamics for about 3 months solid when I came back to England, and had applied for both Aerodynamics and Graphic Design at different universities, but in the end went for Graphic Design. I am also a 250cc gearbox Karter, where weight distribution and aero distribution are vital for a fast laptime. I am in the process of designing a livery for an Formula Jedi car and in the process have spoken to various members of that particular team about weight distribution etc simply because it is a subject I am interested in. You are the troll, posting one liners with no knowledge about the subject.

All we have to go on is comparison between the currently launched cars and as you can see in my original post, it 'appears' further back and evidence of last season states that McLaren ran their rear tyres harder than the Ferrari, Hamiltons Turkey issues, and Ferrari's wet weather performance, or lack thereof. That coupled with Massa's comments on the drop of on grip of the slicks grip levels, leads us to come to the hypothesis that this McLaren on first visual evidence (which is all we will ever get) 'might' (note the emphasis there with the ' ' ) not heat its front tyres as well as the others.

As you say, we do not know if McLaren have large ballast in the front, but from what nearly all F1 teams have been saying about the KERS being heavy, large amounts of ballast are unlikely and the effects of the new downforce regs are also unknown to us, which is why at the end of my post i stated that this is conjecture... we are not experts, otherwise we'd be employed by f1 teams!

All we can do is offer hypotheses at this stage, your comment to the earlier poster wasn't exactly in the spirit of this understanding.

Yeah, Ok, I'm the troll, joining in, not throwing my weight around and discouraging people from trying to contribute.

Nice one.

You win and I couldn't care less, I have better things to do than be told my opinion or contribution is worthless.

Excuse my ignorance but isn’t the fact that the cockpit is further back on the MP4-24, a direct result of the rearward rake of the front wheels steering and suspension arms. This would result in the pedals and thus the driver’s feet being further back from the front wheels centreline. If you look at the picture of the three cars together the MP4-24’s rearmost front arms appear to be 6-8” further back than the Toyota and Ferrari.

It wasn't meant to be an attack, really. I just think that if you are going to post, read even a bit into the subject first, or post something like "This may sound stupid" or similar. I didn't say your contribution was worthless, I was merely pointing out that posting a one-liner with nothing really to say about it, just based on supposition looking at a picture... well maybe I shouldn't have said stupid. Sorry.

RE: the whole trolling thing...

I thought we'd been told that the slicks would lead to far too much grip at the front; Bridgestone had asked to change the tyre dimensions front to rear to balance the cars out but the teams had refused on the grounds of the aero design effort involved. Given that, is it so ridiculous to speculate that McLaren might have moved their weight distribution toward the rear?

EDIT: @ Chewie, well spotted - another indication that weight has moved towards the rear.

Yes, simply because it's the wrong way around. Tyres that give more grip need more weight and aero bias over them or else they will wear out even faster (more grip almost always means more wear, as one of the three ways tyres give grip is through wear, the other two being how much force pushes them down and how great the contact patch is).

EDIT: Thinking about it, actually - the fact that this year's downforce reduction affects the rear of the car more than the front may mean teams need to increase the downforce of the rear end to compensate for that, at the cost of drag... but the weight will still need to be at the front, even more than last year, because there is automatically going to be more downforce (as a percentage) at the front. Interesting how all the evidence points towards Mclaren moving the weight rearwards, apart from the fact the cockpit is further back in the wheelbase, making me wonder whether they have dumped all their available ballast in the extra space at the front, thus trying to match the aero bias (which should be more frontwards looking at the rules) with their weight distribution. In theory. Even the bigger nose points to this.

Steering wheel:





One might think the steering wheel of the new McLaren is from 99 rather than 09 in comparison to all those shifters, regulators, switches of the Ferrari one...

Would you care to quote the rules, that would imply what you're writing here?

See to me this is shows the wonderful world of F1 gamesmanship is alive and well - and I love it! It's still a sport at this level. They're all saying 'oh no, we haven't got any ballast now' which tells me they're all working like horny rabits trying to shave weight everywhere to get the advantage back!!!

I think all we can safely assume at the moment is that the top two teams have gone in slightly different directions regarding design philosophy and that has to be a good thing because its going to create a performance yo-yo effect AND racing.

that nose is so ugly..

to the point where they are getting the drivers on diets, Kubica was complaining about the disadvantage he'd be at in 2009 being a tall heavier driver

That sounds like a possible explanation.

32 yr sponsorship contract with Hugo Boss eh?

Sorry guys, but you can't deduce the weight distribution of an F1 car by just looking at a bunch of pictures on the internet.

Fantastic photo comparison in this thread:-

http://forums.autosport.com/showthread.php...644#post3450644

Unless of course you have spent three months as an aerodynamicist and are a graphic designer who races go carts with gears!

Looks like the same one they were testing bolted onto the 23 last month

Was this a serious comment? Just wondering because you're getting awfully upset by it be justifiably dismissed.

Understeer and oversteer are fundamentally related to tyre cornering stiffness and weight distribution. A the limit the pure friction coefficient of the tyres and the weight distribution are key.

Downforce alters this by changing the load on the tyres and therefore the maximum force they can generate. This will vary with speed.

You can tell neither the weight distribution or the downforce distribution of a car simply by looking at it. Therefore how "fat" it looks subjectively gives no indication of the balance. Therefore your statement that I'm quoting is meaningless, hence why you've been laid into by the other posters.

Ben

Basic design was my thought as well. The rear wing is completely new and it's very high, so I think Ferrari might have gone terribly wrong by just removing the winglets and making 2008-like sidepods. This McLaren looks aerodynamically inferior and simplistic, but at least they are not going to hit terribly wrong IMO, they can develope and progress starting from here.