McLaren have finally announced their new driver line-up for 2015 as it embarks on a new era with Honda power. While Fernando Alonso joins from Ferrari, Jenson Button is retained as a racing racing. Kevin Magnussen will stay at the team as test and reserve driver.
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mclaren_mircea wrote:Mclaren recruited another top aerodynamicist from outside the Mclaren Group, to fill the place of Dan Fallows. Eric Boullier said that he didn't start the work yet, but it is a very big fish, because he said he won't give us any information about the identity of the new aero man until the "in the morning of the day he will be announced". I'm really impressed by Mclaren's recruitment policy. It's the most aggresive campaign that I'm observing for years by an F1 team. It's more aggresive than Red Bull's campaign between 2005-2008 and Mercedes's campaign between 2011-2013. Only without searching not to deep on and at the first attempt on linkedin I found more than 20 new people since May 2013. In the same time Honda is recruiting Mercedes engineers from Brixworth. My question is from where are this money? On various local sites from Surrey several months ago it was said that Mclaren has the Council's final approvement for a new Mclaren Applied Center which will have a totally new wind tunnel for the F1 team. From where so much money without title sponsor and with a U.K economy still with flesh wounds on it?
mikeerfol wrote:Given the improved correlation between sim data and real-time track data, I hope we will see an improved McLaren from Barcelona onwards.
What do you think about next year's engine? I'm afraid of a bad year because of the engine. No track testing, no real experience, no team to make back to back correlation.
Well I think exactly the opposite. It's going to be a good year because of the engine, but McLaren need to fix their car as well so let's see if they can transfer that extra downforce to their car in the following races
mclaren_mircea wrote:Mclaren recruited another top aerodynamicist from outside the Mclaren Group, to fill the place of Dan Fallows. Eric Boullier said that he didn't start the work yet, but it is a very big fish, because he said he won't give us any information about the identity of the new aero man until the "in the morning of the day he will be announced". I'm really impressed by Mclaren's recruitment policy. It's the most aggresive campaign that I'm observing for years by an F1 team. It's more aggresive than Red Bull's campaign between 2005-2008 and Mercedes's campaign between 2011-2013. Only without searching not to deep on and at the first attempt on linkedin I found more than 20 new people since May 2013. In the same time Honda is recruiting Mercedes engineers from Brixworth. My question is from where are this money? On various local sites from Surrey several months ago it was said that Mclaren has the Council's final approvement for a new Mclaren Applied Center which will have a totally new wind tunnel for the F1 team. From where so much money without title sponsor and with a U.K economy still with flesh wounds on it?
No, no, according to Autosprint, Pitlane Talk, and Motorsport-total, Bob Bell will be Technical Director, and Tim Goss will revert to his previous role like he had under Paddy Lowe.
I just read an interview with Ron Dennis on formula1.com. It was interesting to note that Ron is not averse to letting Jenson go. When asked "Could it be that at the end of the season you make the decision to go with two very young drivers - Kevin and Stoffel?", his answer was
Anything is possible, but Jenson is doing a great job. He is quick and he is dedicated so there is no reason not to stay with Jenson from any perspective. But we still have a whole season to go…
akshat21 wrote:I just read an interview with Ron Dennis on formula1.com. It was interesting to note that Ron is not averse to letting Jenson go. When asked "Could it be that at the end of the season you make the decision to go with two very young drivers - Kevin and Stoffel?", his answer was
Anything is possible, but Jenson is doing a great job. He is quick and he is dedicated so there is no reason not to stay with Jenson from any perspective. But we still have a whole season to go…
akshat21 wrote:I just read an interview with Ron Dennis on formula1.com. It was interesting to note that Ron is not averse to letting Jenson go. When asked "Could it be that at the end of the season you make the decision to go with two very young drivers - Kevin and Stoffel?", his answer was
Anything is possible, but Jenson is doing a great job. He is quick and he is dedicated so there is no reason not to stay with Jenson from any perspective. But we still have a whole season to go…
What other answer could he give? He can't promise Jenson a job (in order to motivate him) and he has to dangle the possibility in front of Stoffel (in order to motivate him). I wouldn't read too much into this.
I have a theory on McLaren's approach to pre-season testing that I wanted to share...it may be complete and utter BS, but I thought I'd put it out there...
We all know that they did very little, if any, aero testing of new parts in pre-season testing, instead concentrating on reliability and drive-ability of the new Merc PU, while gathering aero data for correlation purposes.
Could it also be that the reason they spent so much time focussed on the engine was to get as much data as they possibly could as early as possible to help Honda with their PU development?
As I say, just a theory...
Favourite driver: Lando Norris
Favourite team: McLaren
Turned down the chance to meet Vettel at Silverstone in 2007. He was a test driver at the time and I didn't think it was worth queuing!! 🤦🏻♂️
I am not one for these conspiracy theories. Plenty of objective reasons to keep testing simple. Testing lots of variables simultaneously needs a lot of separate experiments, and if you fail to get through your test plan for reliability reasons then you could find yourself with much less good data than if you had kept things fairly simple. In any case it was probably blindingly obvious to them that significant aero opportunities existed as soon as they got hold of their final engines, if the 'suitcase' comments are true, so not much point working through small aero changes.
To complicate the task, new FIA Sporting Regulations for 2014 say that the team can use no more than 30 hours of wind tunnel and CFD time combined. The risk of falling behind is obvious.
Maybe a bit off topic: I knew wind tunnel testing is limited but I didn't know CFD is limited as well (see section 2 in http://www.formula1.com/inside_f1/rules ... 3/fia.html)
I thought big teams could just throw more money in and have more/better CFD than smaller teams. It seems that teams cannot do much trial & error on the aerodynamics as that would just waste CFD time. The designs need to be well thought off before testing them as otherwise it would be a wast of CFD time. Or am I interpreting this incorrect?
This would also be a limiting factor for a car redesign as is sometimes suggested for MCL.
