Mclaren Mercedes 2014

This forum contains threads to discuss teams themselves. Anything not technical about the cars, including restructuring, performances etc belongs here.
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FoxHound
55
Joined: 23 Aug 2012, 16:50

Re: Mclaren-Mercedes F1 Team 2014

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I can't help but feel this PR strategy of promising great strides in performance gains to be counter-productive.
A team sponsor is waiting to sign, and they are waiting for good reason.
They want value from their investment.

Mclaren making these promises of performance puts them under huge pressure and scrutiny. I think a softly softly approach would do them well this year.
JET set

Jef Patat
Jef Patat
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Joined: 06 May 2011, 14:40

Re: Mclaren-Mercedes F1 Team 2014

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acosmichippo wrote:weird, i wonder how they quantify "CFD time".
I read all kind of things in those rules related to CPU, GPU, load, double floating point arithmic, terraflops, ...

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Xero
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Joined: 28 Jan 2014, 15:11
Location: Moray, Scotland

Re: Mclaren-Mercedes F1 Team 2014

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CFD time restriction must be next to impossible to police! There's nothing to stop individuals taking their work "home" and trying out ideas on their own computers.

Jef Patat
Jef Patat
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Joined: 06 May 2011, 14:40

Re: Mclaren-Mercedes F1 Team 2014

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Yes, indeed, or run software that distributes workload elsewhere, ...

But still, that would require a way of working that is 'under the radar' which is always a bit harder/uneasier. In regards to a 'redesign' of a car as is sometimes suggested this could prove to be a limiting factor.

mclaren_mircea
mclaren_mircea
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Joined: 10 Jan 2013, 13:16

Re: Mclaren-Mercedes F1 Team 2014

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I'm following the reconstruction process of the team. And I have 2 questions to change impressions with other Mclaren fans.

I'm very interested in these two detail aspects, especially the question about Promodrou vs Wood/Ellis. Plese moderator don't delete my post, even if it's involving Mercedes team a little. :D

1. What do you think? The poaching of Promodrou is less or more important than what Mercedes poach of Ellis and Wood from the same Red Bull(one is for vehicle dynamics, one for simulation).

2. What do you think, who can be Fallow's replecement? (any distant rumour), or at lest, from what team?

basti313
basti313
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Joined: 22 Feb 2014, 14:49

Re: Mclaren-Mercedes F1 Team 2014

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Xero wrote:CFD time restriction must be next to impossible to police! There's nothing to stop individuals taking their work "home" and trying out ideas on their own computers.
Everything is possible to police as team members switch between the teams every year. So if they do CFD at home this is rather some private fun and can not be mandatory. And just look at the numbers: If they are running CFD on their home computers this is nothing compared to the numbers stated in the rules. The rule has just one aim: To prevent a new war in super computers. The numbers in the rules can be reached by the clusters the teams have already.
mclaren_mircea wrote:I'm following the reconstruction process of the team. And I have 2 questions to change impressions with other Mclaren fans.

I'm very interested in these two detail aspects, especially the question about Promodrou vs Wood/Ellis. Plese moderator don't delete my post, even if it's involving Mercedes team a little. :D

1. What do you think? The poaching of Promodrou is less or more important than what Mercedes poach of Ellis and Wood from the same Red Bull(one is for vehicle dynamics, one for simulation).

2. What do you think, who can be Fallow's replecement? (any distant rumour), or at lest, from what team?
1.: Prodromou is very good and wanted in my view no longer be hidden behind Newey. But as stated in the MP4 thread, I do not think at all, that McLaren has problems with aero, but with the suspension in order to get the aero working. Of course Prodromou will help on the new aero round the new suspension, which is more Redbull like, but they have to solve the suspension problem first.
And as Newey and Fallows are still with Redbull I think the aero department still has no problem, thus I think Ellis and Wood are the bigger loss or the bigger gain for Merc as they can bring the interconnected Redbull suspension to Merc, which should have the best roll stability.

2.: I do not think that there has to be a Fallow replacement. He never was there and Prodromou will come. And I still do not get why McLaren signed both of them as they wanted to leave Redbull because they did not want to work together anymore...
Don`t russel the hamster!

mclaren_mircea
mclaren_mircea
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Joined: 10 Jan 2013, 13:16

Re: Mclaren-Mercedes F1 Team 2014

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basti313 wrote:
Xero wrote:CFD time restriction must be next to impossible to police! There's nothing to stop individuals taking their work "home" and trying out ideas on their own computers.
Everything is possible to police as team members switch between the teams every year. So if they do CFD at home this is rather some private fun and can not be mandatory. And just look at the numbers: If they are running CFD on their home computers this is nothing compared to the numbers stated in the rules. The rule has just one aim: To prevent a new war in super computers. The numbers in the rules can be reached by the clusters the teams have already.
mclaren_mircea wrote:I'm following the reconstruction process of the team. And I have 2 questions to change impressions with other Mclaren fans.

I'm very interested in these two detail aspects, especially the question about Promodrou vs Wood/Ellis. Plese moderator don't delete my post, even if it's involving Mercedes team a little. :D

1. What do you think? The poaching of Promodrou is less or more important than what Mercedes poach of Ellis and Wood from the same Red Bull(one is for vehicle dynamics, one for simulation).

2. What do you think, who can be Fallow's replecement? (any distant rumour), or at lest, from what team?
1.: Prodromou is very good and wanted in my view no longer be hidden behind Newey. But as stated in the MP4 thread, I do not think at all, that McLaren has problems with aero, but with the suspension in order to get the aero working. Of course Prodromou will help on the new aero round the new suspension, which is more Redbull like, but they have to solve the suspension problem first.
And as Newey and Fallows are still with Redbull I think the aero department still has no problem, thus I think Ellis and Wood are the bigger loss or the bigger gain for Merc as they can bring the interconnected Redbull suspension to Merc, which should have the best roll stability.

2.: I do not think that there has to be a Fallow replacement. He never was there and Prodromou will come. And I still do not get why McLaren signed both of them as they wanted to leave Redbull because they did not want to work together anymore...

Yeah, but Promodrou has to know all the details and the aerodynamic philosophy that made Red Bull unbeatable. I think he knows much more of the overall design of the Red Bull cars than Wood and Ellis. Horner and Marko didn't tried so desperately to retain Wood and Ellis as they did with Promodrou this winter. I think that Mclaren might take some information from Mercedes overral design and suspension by taking Bob Bell.

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Shakeman
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Joined: 21 Mar 2011, 13:31
Location: UK

Re: Mclaren-Mercedes F1 Team 2014

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mclaren_mircea wrote:

Yeah, but Promodrou has to know all the details and the aerodynamic philosophy that made Red Bull unbeatable. I think he knows much more of the overall design of the Red Bull cars than Wood and Ellis. Horner and Marko didn't tried so desperately to retain Wood and Ellis as they did with Promodrou this winter. I think that Mclaren might take some information from Mercedes overral design and suspension by taking Bob Bell.
The problem will be that the information that the new team members have will be at least a season out of date. I doubt if there's a bad engineer in F1 but the devil is in the details and it's the details that made the RB so unbeatable will have changed on the new.

Can the Aero team in McLaren exert the same level of control over the rest of the car as the RB team appear to do? There's a lot of stars that have to come into alignment, RB have don't it, Merc have just done it whereas Ferrari and McLaren haven't for some time.

mclaren_mircea
mclaren_mircea
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Re: Mclaren-Mercedes F1 Team 2014

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Shakeman wrote:
mclaren_mircea wrote:

Yeah, but Promodrou has to know all the details and the aerodynamic philosophy that made Red Bull unbeatable. I think he knows much more of the overall design of the Red Bull cars than Wood and Ellis. Horner and Marko didn't tried so desperately to retain Wood and Ellis as they did with Promodrou this winter. I think that Mclaren might take some information from Mercedes overral design and suspension by taking Bob Bell.
The problem will be that the information that the new team members have will be at least a season out of date. I doubt if there's a bad engineer in F1 but the devil is in the details and it's the details that made the RB so unbeatable will have changed on the new.

Can the Aero team in McLaren exert the same level of control over the rest of the car as the RB team appear to do? There's a lot of stars that have to come into alignment, RB have don't it, Merc have just done it whereas Ferrari and McLaren haven't for some time.
If you look on linkedin, Mercedes is loosing more people than any top team in the last months. Daimler's investment was in this engine and for a championship, but they never spendt huge amounts on money. For the new car and and the new engine they took budget from their DTM programme, but they won't spend lots of money in the long term. Niki Lauda said that Mercedes will start to fire people not only from Brixworth but also from Brackley, and in Brackley they have only 612 people. In the same time Mclaren and Ferrari are recruiting more strongly than Mercedes between 2011-2013, and Honda's philosophy is more towards spending than Daimler. They lost Brawn, than Bell, but a lot more junior staff. I repeat, Daimler can't sustain a war spending on the longer term, while Mclaren-Honda and Ferrari can. Remember, they will start firing people and they have only 612 people in Brackley. Ferrari, Red Bull and Mclaren have already more people than Mercedes, before Mercedes start to shed staff.
You will see than when the engine advantage will be deluted, they won't keep the development pace with Ferrari, Red Bull (not Mclaren because they have to divert lots of resources towards the Honda powered mp4-30)

P.S Don't delete my post, I isn't written to attack Mercedes, only to make some amendments to what Shakeman said that Ferrari and Mclaren doesn't have what Mercedes have.

CptPeanut
CptPeanut
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Joined: 24 Feb 2014, 18:07

Re: Mclaren-Mercedes F1 Team 2014

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I'm not sure how reliable Linked-In is for staffing numbers, McLaren are recruiting quite heavily but these are mainly for Automotive.

It also stands to reason that if next years cars are to be only variants of this seasons then some of the design staff at Merc could be let go as there will be a reduction in workload.

mclaren_mircea
mclaren_mircea
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Re: Mclaren-Mercedes F1 Team 2014

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Cold Fussion
Cold Fussion
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Joined: 19 Dec 2010, 04:51

Re: Mclaren-Mercedes F1 Team 2014

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Xero wrote:CFD time restriction must be next to impossible to police! There's nothing to stop individuals taking their work "home" and trying out ideas on their own computers.
I'm not sure what you mean by "home", but they certainly wont be running CFD on a home computer. The complex CFD work done by the teams requires a vast amount of computing power, so I imagine there are few places where you can realistically buy enough continuous super computing time. A 500 teraflop super computer can probably be had for less than 10 million now, I don't see why they need to aggressively limit CFD time.

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FrukostScones
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Joined: 25 May 2010, 17:41
Location: European Union

Re: Mclaren-Mercedes F1 Team 2014

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no downforce, no power and management by angst, McLaren in full decline:

http://translate.google.de/translate?sl ... t=&act=url
Finishing races is important, but racing is more important.

akshat21
akshat21
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Joined: 05 Feb 2010, 23:23

Re: Mclaren-Mercedes F1 Team 2014

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From what I saw in the article, Ron Dennis is putting the fear of god in the Engineers and everyone else. That, for me, is not necessarily a bad thing. They are there for a reason. Namely, to win. If they are not competent enough to perform, they will be replaced. If that is the attitude Dennis is bringing back, I think we will see the old McLaren back.

On a side note, I really like how McLaren is becoming meaner again. The way the war of words between Christian and Ron is going on and the fact that McLaren are dragging RB to court shows the desire from Ron to make his presence felt and put it out to other teams that if they try any funny business, there will be consequences.

mclaren_mircea
mclaren_mircea
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Re: Mclaren-Mercedes F1 Team 2014

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http://grandprix247.com/2014/04/29/butt ... eg-injury/

Button injured his leg, muscular problems on triathlon last weekend. Off... I can''t believe such a bad luck. He may miss the Spanish GP or will not be at 100% :(

What do you think? It's a real problems or only a storm in a glass with water? Will Spain be in danger?