145 replies to this topic

[Lemans]

The things that surprised me the most:
-Withmarsh said they were piling on downforce while losing sight of ride height sensitivity.

-The aero subgroups were not properly linked together. Also track aero was nt properly linked to the factory aero group:



He also apportions some blame to Paddy Lowe:


This does not make Paddy Lowe look that great at all. I'm sure he's been quite surprised at the technical capability at Mercedes, which is a very young and instable team compared to McLaren.
McLaren has been well funded with great stability over many, many years. Those are very important ingredients for success.
Given that, they have underperformed massively.

Wait a minute!...That can't be true because all the really smart people on this forum told me Button was responsible for car development, not Paddy Lowe.

Edited by Lemans, 09 August 2013 - 18:07.

[Owen]

Nice to see certain members of the forum have taken Martin's comment in the correct context.

There wasn't correct correlation between their wind tunnel and reality, the wind tunnel said part X would provide Y points of DF but in reality it provided more. That's not "the Lewis effect" its a poor correlation effect, which has contributed to this years car being so far off the pace too, they didn't understand what made the 2012 car so good which has led to them taking the wrong direction this year.

There appear to be factions intent on making every McLaren issue 'about Lewis'

[undersquare]

The things that surprised me the most:
-Withmarsh said they were piling on downforce while losing sight of ride height sensitivity.

-The aero subgroups were not properly linked together. Also track aero was nt properly linked to the factory aero group:

He also apportions some blame to Paddy Lowe:

This does not make Paddy Lowe look that great at all. I'm sure he's been quite surprised at the technical capability at Mercedes, which is a very young and instable team compared to McLaren.
McLaren has been well funded with great stability over many, many years. Those are very important ingredients for success.
Given that, they have underperformed massively.

Is there a Head of Aero after John Iley? I'd have thought that was the role that would have been, er, synergizing aero subgroups?

[NoDivergence]

Nice to see certain members of the forum have taken Martin's comment in the correct context.

There wasn't correct correlation between their wind tunnel and reality, the wind tunnel said part X would provide Y points of DF but in reality it provided more. That's not "the Lewis effect" its a poor correlation effect, which has contributed to this years car being so far off the pace too, they didn't understand what made the 2012 car so good which has led to them taking the wrong direction this year.

Correlating to whom? Whose data are they correlating the wind tunnel data to?

Think about that one

[SamH123]

Really interesting comments by Whitmarsh and still some people finding whiny undermining criticism, desperate to poke fun
ugh I'm sad

[BillBald]

MW is drawing attention to some organisational problems, but there is also a problem with decision-making at the highest level.

They must have known at some point during the last season that there was poor correlation between windtunnel and track, but they chose to ignore it because they were getting better results than expected - it's like the saying "don't look a gift horse in the mouth". But the gifted extra downforce revealed an underlying problem which should not have been ignored.

It's clear that they should have addressed the correlation problem by continuing to work on the 27, and should have abandoned anything they had already done on the 28 because they had no way of knowing whether it would work.

Jenson's problems with the 27 were almost entirely in the first half of the season. In the course of the season, either he adjusted his driving, or his engineers worked out how to set it up for him, or both. No reason to think that process would not have continued, if they'd stuck with the same basic car.

When you are having problems with correlation, it means that you are going to be making a lot of setup changes at the track. So it seems doubly ridiculous to go with a design which was known to make setup changes more difficult and time-consuming.

[Timstr11]

Is there a Head of Aero after John Iley? I'd have thought that was the role that would have been, er, synergizing aero subgroups?

I have no idea who's heading aero tbh.

[P123]

Is there a Head of Aero after John Iley? I'd have thought that was the role that would have been, er, synergizing aero subgroups?

I'm sure he left for Caterham?

[undersquare]

I'm sure he left for Caterham?

Yeah, I can't find anything about a replacement, just wondering if that's the root of the problem.

[ashley313]

To anyone doubting their perceived "go for broke" direction - do you think its more satisfying to stay the course and probably still come up short behind RBR, or to at least try to come up with the next big thing that could dominate? I kind of respect the choice. It's what RBR was doing early in 2012, and you could see their struggle in the results - but look how well it worked out for them in the end. We don't know yet what the result will be for McLaren. Obviously they are still struggling right now, but there could be a breakthrough coming, or the whole exercise could prove incredibly beneficial for next year's car. It's easy to just facepalm at them every weekend, but I'm not ready to condemn the management or the technical teams just yet.

[Timstr11]

To anyone doubting their perceived "go for broke" direction - do you think its more satisfying to stay the course and probably still come up short behind RBR, or to at least try to come up with the next big thing that could dominate? I kind of respect the choice. It's what RBR was doing early in 2012, and you could see their struggle in the results - but look how well it worked out for them in the end. We don't know yet what the result will be for McLaren. Obviously they are still struggling right now, but there could be a breakthrough coming, or the whole exercise could prove incredibly beneficial for next year's car. It's easy to just facepalm at them every weekend, but I'm not ready to condemn the management or the technical teams just yet.

In F1 always judge a team on the job they did the year before.
The 2013 car is a reflection of the organization they had in 2012.
Obviously they have made changes, which will be reflected in the 2014 car.

Edited by Timstr11, 09 August 2013 - 19:21.

[bauss]

the funny weird thing people are trying to do is totally separate predicted downforce from the wind tunnel and actual laptime delivered by the drivers on track.

At the end of the day, what the driver does in every corner / overall laptime is what is correlated with numbers from the windtunnel / simulators... sure when there are big discrepancies, with the average F1 driver driving the car you see it. But in this year when the regs have stabilized for a while now and improvements are becoming more and more minute, the smallest details and factors become even more crucial in modelling accuracy.

It's pretty damn obvious even without MW's words that losing your clear benchmark driver in terms of speed will affect that process.

Edited by bauss, 09 August 2013 - 19:22.

[peroa]

Yeah, I can't find anything about a replacement, just wondering if that's the root of the problem.

Wasn't Doug McKSomething head of aero afterwards?

[undersquare]

Wasn't Doug McKSomething head of aero afterwards?

Ah, Doug McKiernan. He was Principal Aerodynamicist in 2009, did he get promoted? Makes sense. OK well...Chief Aerodynamicist..

[scheivlak]

All prophesied in

[Ferrari_F1_fan_2001]

Mclaren went too radical in their development and it backfired like in 2009.

Maybe they will get lucky again and win another championship in.......2020?

[shonguiz]

Terrible job by the thread opener choosing to only out those snippets, what MW is essentialy saying is that their correlation problem didn't start this year but they started last year.

[olliek88]

Correlating to whom? Whose data are they correlating the wind tunnel data to?

Think about that one

The myriad of sensors they fit to the cars during FP sessions, perhaps?

Far more reliable than the fleshy organic bit in the middle...

[BillBald]

The myriad of sensors they fit to the cars during FP sessions, perhaps?

Far more reliable than the fleshy organic bit in the middle...

LOL at all the Lewis fans telling us this is all about Lewis.

Good move to change the thread title, anyway.

[P123]

LOL at all the Lewis fans telling us this is all about Lewis.

Apart from the OP, can you name them please?

[BillBald]

Apart from the OP, can you name them please?

Well, I don't think we are supposed to talk about posters...

Let me make it clear that I wasn't saying that all Lewis fans were claiming this was about Lewis.

I was just saying I was amused by all those who were. But I noticed several Lewis fans who made worthwhile contributions.

Perhaps I expressed myself badly.

[Buttoneer]

Apart from the OP, can you name them please?

I could. There are many. They have been deleted for the sake of our sanity.

Please can we get back on topic? Which, for the avoidance of doubt, is not Lewis Hamilton.

[P123]

Well, I don't think we are supposed to talk about posters...

Let me make it clear that I wasn't saying that all Lewis fans were claiming this was about Lewis.

I was just saying I was amused by all those who were. But I noticed several Lewis fans who made worthwhile contributions.

Perhaps I expressed myself badly.

Heh- I only asked as a particular person took a similar line in a previous topic. Quite annoying when generalisations are made about supposed fan groups. The topic was slightly leading in it's title and OP, which have belatedly been edited- thanks to the mods on that one. Always helps when people read actual articles.

[Fox1]

Mclaren went too radical in their development and it backfired like in 2009.

Constructors' Championship
Pos. Team Points
1. Red Bull 277
2. Mercedes Grand Prix 208
3. Ferrari 194
4. Lotus Renault 183
5. Force India F1 59
6. McLaren 57
7. Scuderia Toro Rosso 24
8. Sauber 7
9. Williams 1
10. Marussia 0
11. Caterham

The 2009 car wasn't radical, if anything it was too conservative. The only team I don't think I've heard openly complain about correlation issues is RBR. Ferrari went "radical" last year and they were still in the ballpark. I don't think this car is radical, but radical or not this team has underperformed to a level that is inexcusable.

Edited by Fox1, 10 August 2013 - 01:20.

[chumma]

Come on Martin....

[bonjon1979a]

I could. There are many. They have been deleted for the sake of our sanity.

Please can we get back on topic? Which, for the avoidance of doubt, is not Lewis Hamilton.

How is any of this 'on topic'?

[pizzalover]

It seems to me that they discovered that there wasn't correlation between the 2012 car and the wind tunnel model (60%?) as part of their investigation as to what has gone wrong. It doesn't really matter which way the correlation is wrong - it's much better to have accurate information.

What Whitmarsh is really admitting is that designing and developing an F1 car is still very much an art and not really a science. There are too many variables and not enough constants for it to be predictable. There's plenty of science involved but many of the important decisions are made with educated guesses and intuition. This is really the genius of Newey, to conceptualize a car as a whole and project how it will work before a single CFD cycle is run or a wind tunnel is fired up.

Exactly so.

But no one here wants it to be like that. Polarisation debates surrounding of personalities is more fun. Oh, and conspiracy theories.

[teejay]

Shameful to be excuse this years car like this.

[Diablobb81]

What i don't understand is this : if what MW says about he 2012 is true on what basis did they make the decision to start a new concept for 2013? Their justification was that they realized that the 2012 car exhausted it's potential. Bot that is contradicted by what he says now.

[Timstr11]

Ah, Doug McKiernan. He was Principal Aerodynamicist in 2009, did he get promoted? Makes sense. OK well...Chief Aerodynamicist..

The thing is, you can have a different lead guy, but if the organisation and R&D methodologies do not change, you will make the same mistakes.
And since this guy was promoted from within, it's likely they continued to work the same way until they hit trouble with the 2013 car.

[MinT]

I am sure it wasn't his intention - but MW makes McLaren seem clueless, lucking into or out of car design and having no real understanding why.

[JaredS]

What you tend to have in an aerodynamic development team is people who are working on the front end or the front wing, or the rear floor, or the sidepods... You have a little bit more compartmentalisation than you would like and the organisation has to pull together a synthesis and make sure that there is actually some synergy and cohesion between all those elements. I'm not trying to blame any particular element, we just didn't pull it all together.

This is really interesting. It just sounds so disjointed. How can they not have someone directing, leading and pulling all the different aero elements together? This is where someone like Newey is fantastic for Red Bull - you just know he's got a car philosophy and he's directing all his men and women to achieve that philosophy. I'm really surprised that McLaren is working in this way. Definitely need a Head of Aero that directs them to work as one cohesive unit.

[Peter Perfect]

It seems to me that they discovered that there wasn't correlation between the 2012 car and the wind tunnel model (60%?) as part of their investigation as to what has gone wrong. It doesn't really matter which way the correlation is wrong - it's much better to have accurate information.

What Whitmarsh is really admitting is that designing and developing an F1 car is still very much an art and not really a science. There are too many variables and not enough constants for it to be predictable. There's plenty of science involved but many of the important decisions are made with educated guesses and intuition. This is really the genius of Newey, to conceptualize a car as a whole and project how it will work before a single CFD cycle is run or a wind tunnel is fired up.

Yep, I agree and especially the bolded bit which reminds me of the early BAR cars. I seem to remember BAR were also organised around getting the most from each aero section individually and then putting them together assuming that they'd still all work....which needless to say wasn't a successful strategy.

[olliek88]

Maybe you guys/girls should give Martin a call, sounds like he could do with your expertise...

[undersquare]

The thing is, you can have a different lead guy, but if the organisation and R&D methodologies do not change, you will make the same mistakes.
And since this guy was promoted from within, it's likely they continued to work the same way until they hit trouble with the 2013 car.

McKeirnan was already Chief Aerodynamicist when Iley left, so as far as I can see they just didn't replace their Head of Aero.

Though at the time (end of 2011) MW 'wasn't fazed':

When probed on whether Illey's departure was a major loss for McLaren, team principal Martin Whitmarsh replied: "John looked after wind tunnel management. He wasn't chief aerodynamicist. We are very comfortable we have good aerodynamics programme for next season. We are optimistic that we won't make the same mistakes this winter as we did last time." The team retains chief aerodynamicist, Doug McKiernan, who has worked on every McLaren since the MP4-22

And they were OK for the 2012 car, but not for the next one.

Well it's hard to know, but it looks structural: lack of oversight, and possibly money-saving.

[redreni]

McKeirnan was already Chief Aerodynamicist when Iley left, so as far as I can see they just didn't replace their Head of Aero.

Though at the time (end of 2011) MW 'wasn't fazed':

When probed on whether Illey's departure was a major loss for McLaren, team principal Martin Whitmarsh replied: "John looked after wind tunnel management. He wasn't chief aerodynamicist. We are very comfortable we have good aerodynamics programme for next season. We are optimistic that we won't make the same mistakes this winter as we did last time." The team retains chief aerodynamicist, Doug McKiernan, who has worked on every McLaren since the MP4-22

And they were OK for the 2012 car, but not for the next one.

Well it's hard to know, but it looks structural: lack of oversight, and possibly money-saving.

So they didn't replace the guy who looked after the windtunnel, and now they're getting beaten by Force India because the windtunnel data is garbage....

[undersquare]

So they didn't replace the guy who looked after the windtunnel, and now they're getting beaten by Force India because the windtunnel data is garbage....

It's a bit obscure isn't it? In Pitpass MW described Iley's role as 'managerial', which I guess is what you want to coordinate a number of separate aero groups. Maybe the windtunnel role was managerial too?

It reminds me a bit of that McLaren Chief Designer who didn't actually design cars (and still doesn't by the look of it...)

[WitnessX]

A couple of points..

MP4-26 (2011) - Near disaster?
-----------------------
We seem to have forgotten that '26 was also close to being a disaster as well. The chassis and aero design were based around the "fantail" exhaust, that was plan A.. In real life it kept breaking, Plan 'B' was worse, and fortunately plan 'C' was workable. Remember the pre-season tests?
http://scarbsf1.com/...ctopus-exhaust/

MP4-27 (2012) - Tyres,Tyres... tyres!
-----------------------
Much of the performance of the cars was based on getting the "mysterious" tyres to work (or not as the case may be), find the tyre sweet spot and you were a winner. The '26 was tyre sensitive.

For example in the same race it would good on heavy wets but then bad on Intermediates or vica versa. This was also true on the dry tyres (options/prime) to the point of finding the ultimate compromise between qualifying (options) and race (prime) was key.

IIRC Button said that they changed development direction mid-season from a "performance" based to "getting the tyres to work" which obviously suceeded. The point being that the tyres had a huge part in the "performance" of the cars.

--
Obviously Whitmarsh has recognised the weaknesses in their design system and with Lowe's departure has the opportunity to do corrections.

[Fox1]

A couple of points..

MP4-26 (2011) - Near disaster?
-----------------------
We seem to have forgotten that '26 was also close to being a disaster as well. The chassis and aero design were based around the "fantail" exhaust, that was plan A.. In real life it kept breaking, Plan 'B' was worse, and fortunately plan 'C' was workable. Remember the pre-season tests?

To be fair to the design team, that is exactly why you test. The design was unreliable but they knew where to target their attention and arrived at a workable solution in time for Melbourne FP1. That is very different from what's occurred this season;where the team appear to be clueless in identifying the problem. There has to be a continuous exchange of useful feedback between the designers, engineers, and drivers to make this work. ALL three are key ingredients needed to produce a "competitive" car. I say competitive because you can have a competitive car and still not win because other teams have simply done a better job. McLaren are not even in the ballpark and that is very unusual for a team of this calibre. All teams have correlation issues (to varying degrees) between CFD, Aero, & Track. Even RBR took some time to get the RB8's exhaust to work as planned, but while they were having their performance slump early in the season, they were still competitive. Ferrari are still complaining that their wind tunnel issues aren't resolved.

IIRC Button said that they changed development direction mid-season from a "performance" based to "getting the tyres to work" which obviously suceeded.

How did the team arrive at the decision on which direction to take?

[BillBald]

A couple of points..

MP4-26 (2011) - Near disaster?
-----------------------
We seem to have forgotten that '26 was also close to being a disaster as well. The chassis and aero design were based around the "fantail" exhaust, that was plan A.. In real life it kept breaking, Plan 'B' was worse, and fortunately plan 'C' was workable. Remember the pre-season tests?
http://scarbsf1.com/...ctopus-exhaust/

MP4-27 (2012) - Tyres,Tyres... tyres!
-----------------------
Much of the performance of the cars was based on getting the "mysterious" tyres to work (or not as the case may be), find the tyre sweet spot and you were a winner. The '26 was tyre sensitive.

For example in the same race it would good on heavy wets but then bad on Intermediates or vica versa. This was also true on the dry tyres (options/prime) to the point of finding the ultimate compromise between qualifying (options) and race (prime) was key.

IIRC Button said that they changed development direction mid-season from a "performance" based to "getting the tyres to work" which obviously suceeded. The point being that the tyres had a huge part in the "performance" of the cars.

--
Obviously Whitmarsh has recognised the weaknesses in their design system and with Lowe's departure has the opportunity to do corrections.

Well, they haven't just lost Paddy.

Hard to believe that all of the people who have left haven't left some kind of hole in their organisation. We will have to see what they can do with reorganisation and some recruitment.

Compared with Red Bull, I suppose that all of their cars in recent years have been flawed in some way, which when combined with flawed race ops, has left the drivers with too much to do. MW has a lot of corrections to make, it'll be interesting to see if he turns out to be the man for the job.

[seahawk]

Imho all teams apart from Red Bull struggle with the exhaust gases. Last years McLaren solution seem to have worked, but it seems they now notice that they really can not say why.

Edited by seahawk, 10 August 2013 - 15:27.

[FastnLoud]

I don't care who it is, NOBODY can outperform their car

I think in a way you are right but when drviers take a car beyond it's limits the car will let you know example - it's how good a driver is to be able to correct this as soon as possible forcing out lap time.

[george1981]

From some of the comments attributed to Martin Whitmarsh it seems to be that McLaren are missing someone like Adrian Newey. They seem to have people only focussed on their area and are missing someone who is responsible for the concept of the total car. Having said that though, isn't this the way McLaren have often worked? I believe that McLaren's method of managing car development didn't fit in with the way that Adrian Newey liked to work. Despite the criticism the McLaren management system has produced several championship winning cars.
It would be interesting to know what has changed at McLaren between last year and this year. When they started testing, after a false dawn, it was clear they were in trouble. That can't be attributed to the driver change, it is an engineering issue. I wonder if the lose of factory Mercedes engines might be beginning to have an impact. Is this limiting their development spending?

[Lazy]

Imho all teams apart from Red Bull struggle with the exhaust gases. Last years McLaren solution seem to have worked, but it seems they know notice that they really can not say why.

I think there is a big difference between saying "the updates gave us a little bit more than we expected" and " we don't know how the car works".

[Lazy]

From some of the comments attributed to Martin Whitmarsh it seems to be that McLaren are missing someone like Adrian Newey.

I think every team except RB is missing someone like Newey, he has been the best in the business for a long while now.

The problem with the Newey approach is that it needs Adrian Newey to make it work, what do you do when he leaves?

McLaren has to have a long term approach that does not rely on any individual which is why they do things the way they do imo.

Next year will be very different, aero will not be as important due to the ERS etc. RB, who seem to struggle to make their kers work, may find their one man show approach could let them down.

[seahawk]

I think there is a big difference between saying "the updates gave us a little bit more than we expected" and " we don't know how the car works".

I di not say the car, I said the exhaust solution. But this is the most difficult aero part today, as the 60% scale model won´t allow you to simulate it with the real engine. So you are down to your computer model and straight line tests.