2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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Xero
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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PhillipM wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 22:03
Actually FI also had correlation problems around the bottom of the sidepods near the floor early on - which is exactly where Mclaren has been running flowvis and pitiot arrays for the past 3 races.

I did wonder if they were having seperation issues as you could see on the flowvis back in Canada and Monaco, but I just put it down to the access panel/exit vent in the area at the time.
I agree, it looks like they're having separation issues, the flow-vis was a dead giveaway. The balance of the car seems to be decent, so it seems the downforce is just bleeding away in certain circumstances, in yaw perhaps. It all seems quite bizarre, if the car was getting lively under acceleration / cornering / braking, I'd understand the lack of speed. It looks fairly planted though.

RonDennis
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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Xero wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 22:32
PhillipM wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 22:03
Actually FI also had correlation problems around the bottom of the sidepods near the floor early on - which is exactly where Mclaren has been running flowvis and pitiot arrays for the past 3 races.

I did wonder if they were having seperation issues as you could see on the flowvis back in Canada and Monaco, but I just put it down to the access panel/exit vent in the area at the time.
I agree, it looks like they're having separation issues, the flow-vis was a dead giveaway. The balance of the car seems to be decent, so it seems the downforce is just bleeding away in certain circumstances, in yaw perhaps. It all seems quite bizarre, if the car was getting lively under acceleration / cornering / braking, I'd understand the lack of speed. It looks fairly planted though.
That could be caused by the fact they're running more wing to get better traction out of the slow corners.

RonDennis
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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mwillems wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 22:14
PhillipM wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 22:03
Actually FI also had correlation problems around the bottom of the sidepods near the floor early on - which is exactly where Mclaren has been running flowvis and pitiot arrays for the past 3 races.

I did wonder if they were having seperation issues as you could see on the flowvis back in Canada and Monaco, but I just put it down to the access panel/exit vent in the area at the time.

So since they banged on the new nose. I wonder if it really did make it worse, if they suspected anything before and if they essentially focused their development on fixing the issue. Development will have stagnated somewhat since then in an effort to fix the issue, which would explain why we are going backwards somewhat.

But then why on earth were we competitive at Monaco? What we are being told does not add up to me. This doesn't make sense.

Supposed issues with low speed traction, but we go to a track with almost nothing but low speed traction and we produce some very good speed.

Please, someone explain how this can be the case?
Because Monaco isn't about top speed and aero.

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mwillems
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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Yes, it's about low speed traction, which is where the problems lie, we are told. Yet at Monaco these issues did not manifest, and we produced good times (Speed). How can this be the case?
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Edax
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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mwillems wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 22:45
Yes, it's about low speed traction, which is where the problems lie, we are told. Yet at Monaco these issues did not manifest, and we produced good times (Speed). How can this be the case?
Because monaco is more like a windtunnel? There was a lot of wind in le Castillet, could this be messing up the aero performance?

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rscsr
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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Zynerji wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 20:59
I don't think the track testing is anywhere as good as putting it in a full sized tunnel. Smoke trails with high speed cameras I'm sure gives much more data than flow vis on a dirty track with cross winds.

But, not my circus, not my monkeys.
Off topic, but afaik smoke trails are pretty outdated and only done for show.
The proper way to do it is using PIV.

Edax
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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rscsr wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 22:59
Zynerji wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 20:59
I don't think the track testing is anywhere as good as putting it in a full sized tunnel. Smoke trails with high speed cameras I'm sure gives much more data than flow vis on a dirty track with cross winds.

But, not my circus, not my monkeys.
Off topic, but afaik smoke trails are pretty outdated and only done for show.
The proper way to do it is using PIV.
PIV needs particulates to track. Smoke works pretty well in combination with PIV.

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mwillems
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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Edax wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 22:50
mwillems wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 22:45
Yes, it's about low speed traction, which is where the problems lie, we are told. Yet at Monaco these issues did not manifest, and we produced good times (Speed). How can this be the case?
Because monaco is more like a windtunnel? There was a lot of wind in le Castillet, could this be messing up the aero performance?
Could be, although you'd think that by the harbour that wouldn't be the case. And as the car turns, the wind would hit the car at different angles. But having looked at the best sector times for qualifying, Alonso looked solid for the entire lap.

Did the extreme downforce levels mitigate the issue?
Give a man a fire, and he will be warm for a night.
Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

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mwillems
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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Edax wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 22:50
mwillems wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 22:45
Yes, it's about low speed traction, which is where the problems lie, we are told. Yet at Monaco these issues did not manifest, and we produced good times (Speed). How can this be the case?
Because monaco is more like a windtunnel? There was a lot of wind in le Castillet, could this be messing up the aero performance?
Does anyone recall reports of particularly windy conditions at Canada at specific corners during qualifying? We have some good data in the team thread for that session IIRC, perhaps we could see some correlation.
Give a man a fire, and he will be warm for a night.
Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

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Redragon
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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I believe every time that a team blames the Wind tunnel correlations problem they are just buying time to other problems, they might have some issues but with the technology available today I think it is used more as a scapegoat
Last edited by Redragon on 24 Jun 2018, 23:35, edited 1 time in total.

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Redragon
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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Redragon wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 23:32
I believe every time that a team blames the Wind tunnel correlations problem they are just buying time to other problems, they might have some issues but with the technology available today I think it is used more as a scapegoat

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mwillems
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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True but it is worth exploring. Also, they may not have know they had issues a few months back.
Give a man a fire, and he will be warm for a night.
Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

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Redragon
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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mwillems wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 23:37
True but it is worth exploring. Also, they may not have know they had issues a few months back.
They were happy about the upgrade back in Spain http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12479/ ... h-red-bull
And they didn't introduce much upgrades since I think they are just buying time because there is a political or management war internally.

Dipesh1995
Dipesh1995
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Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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RonDennis wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 22:40
Xero wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 22:32
PhillipM wrote:
24 Jun 2018, 22:03
Actually FI also had correlation problems around the bottom of the sidepods near the floor early on - which is exactly where Mclaren has been running flowvis and pitiot arrays for the past 3 races.

I did wonder if they were having seperation issues as you could see on the flowvis back in Canada and Monaco, but I just put it down to the access panel/exit vent in the area at the time.
I agree, it looks like they're having separation issues, the flow-vis was a dead giveaway. The balance of the car seems to be decent, so it seems the downforce is just bleeding away in certain circumstances, in yaw perhaps. It all seems quite bizarre, if the car was getting lively under acceleration / cornering / braking, I'd understand the lack of speed. It looks fairly planted though.
That could be caused by the fact they're running more wing to get better traction out of the slow corners.
How does running more wing increase traction? I presume you mean traction out of hair pins etc where the air velocity is so slow that downforce makes minimal difference. At that point, it’s all about mechanical grip i.e whether or not the car able to extract and exploit the maximum potential grip i.e friction the tyre is able to generate without the influence of significant additional load from the aerodynamics.
Last edited by Dipesh1995 on 24 Jun 2018, 23:49, edited 1 time in total.

ALO_Power
ALO_Power
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Joined: 22 Feb 2016, 21:53

Re: 2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

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Things are very weird. In Spain, Monaco they were happy indeed and their qualifying form definitely showed improvement. Also were in the point in all races actually since now (even before DNF). Now things went downhill and they started to reveal issues. Initially they told that they don't have enough grip in the slower corners so they have to run more wings and that's penalizing straight line speed. That makes some sense, in Monaco they were okayish since straight line speed doesn't matter. As for aero, we will see in Silverstone. But still, very weird stuff, last year they said they had 98% correlation with the wind tunnel data. I think the problem is that they spent most of the time on getting the Renault P.U and didn't focus much on developing while everyone did that and now midfield is super close. Probably they also relaxed much thinking that MCL32 was enough with some little updated and Renault P.U. Plus, as for the internal crisis, I think it's pretty normal if u think about it. After so much pain since 2015 they thought that Honda was the reason for all of their problems (for sure Honda played its role when they were barely running the car but it wasn't the only problem) so the employees still had hope in 2018 with the Renault P.U (remember that they were all pushing for the ditch of Honda??). However, after not meeting expectations then the anger probably started to explode since they lost hope.