Mclaren Chassis Vs Honda Power Unit

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godlameroso
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Re: Mclaren Chassis Vs Honda Power Unit

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Why did the Mclaren package work so well in Sochi which is a power circuit? Lots of medium speed turns.
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Alonsofor2017
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Re: Mclaren Chassis Vs Honda Power Unit

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Maybe the car is good only at mid speed sweeping corners, for example at Hungary, and does alright at some power tracks because of its low drag compromise

But it is low on power and has average mechanical grip and downforce

Dipesh1995
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Re: Mclaren Chassis Vs Honda Power Unit

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The McLaren does have good downforce but tbh the McLaren didn't really work well at Sochi. They qualified 12th and 14th. The reason Alonso finished 6th is because of the crash between the Red Bulls and Vettel. Otherwise, he would have finished 9th. The fact that Magnussen in the Renault finished seventh puts the result into perspective.

Overall, imo, I reckon the McLaren has good downforce, mediocre mechanical grip and a poor PU.

Alonsofor2017
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Re: Mclaren Chassis Vs Honda Power Unit

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Dipesh1995 wrote:The McLaren does have good downforce but tbh the McLaren didn't really work well at Sochi. They qualified 12th and 14th. The reason Alonso finished 6th is because of the crash between the Red Bulls and Vettel. Otherwise, he would have finished 9th. The fact that Magnussen in the Renault finished seventh puts the result into perspective.

Overall, imo, I reckon the McLaren has good downforce, mediocre mechanical grip and a poor PU.
Agree 100% maybe a bit behind Ferrari for down force but nowhere with mechanical grip, red bull have easily the best mechanical grip

NL_Fer
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Re: Mclaren Chassis Vs Honda Power Unit

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I cannot make any sense of Macca's performance this year, bad pu but strong in Sochi and Spa. Good in Hungary, bad in Silverstone.

They seem to improve allot in the race, although the PU is less efficient (thirsty). Maybe the chassis is good on the tyres, at the cost of mechanical grip. And they need some speed to make the downforce to overcome this defficit. Maybe the chassis is built for a stronger pu, focussing on the future.

Medium speed twisty corners, i hope they fly in Japan.

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Nuvolari
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Re: Mclaren Chassis Vs Honda Power Unit

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Dipesh1995 wrote:Overall, imo, I reckon the McLaren has good downforce, mediocre mechanical grip and a poor PU.
The chassis did well in Barcelona S3 so there have been indications that the it can generate good mechanical grip. I'm leaning towards this assessment:
NL_Fer wrote:Maybe the chassis is good on the tyres, at the cost of mechanical grip. And they need some speed to make the downforce to overcome this defficit. Maybe the chassis is built for a stronger pu, focussing on the future.
I get the feeling that the chassis needs some speed to 'breathe' so it can work the tyres well enough to generate the grip. Short and stumpy acceleration zones and corners limits the way the chassis generates mechanical grip and the team tend to struggle. To my mind this would explain why it was so good in Spa, did reasonably well in Hungary, and the Barcelona S3 performance.

Bear in mind that I'm no engineer or aerodynamicist. Simply a feeling from looking at the data.

Oh, for all the hype about Red Bull's chassis, they got schooled by Mercedes today. How do you explain that? Lost a huge chunk in S2.

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PlatinumZealot
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Re: Mclaren Chassis Vs Honda Power Unit

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Ever since 2012 McLaren has favoured tamer suspension systems to help Button.. I noticed that McLarens were no longer front end grip monsters since then.. Still decent turn in but not close to the top teams.
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Andres125sx
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Re: Mclaren Chassis Vs Honda Power Unit

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Nuvolari wrote:Oh, for all the hype about Red Bull's chassis, they got schooled by Mercedes today. How do you explain that? Lost a huge chunk in S2.
Who said Mercedes chassis is far from the best? :roll:

I think it´s crystal clear for everyone Mercedes strong point is not the PU alone, but the chassis too. RBR have best chassis, but even at Singapore the PU is still working for some seconds each lap, so even on tracks like Singapore the PU still play its role.

Best two chassis, but best PU vs third best PU, as simple as that.



btw De la Rosa made a nice comparison between Mclaren getting out of slow corners and the rest. After watching the images it´s obvious McLaren is missing traction out of slow corners

BeardedAce
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Re: Mclaren Chassis Vs Honda Power Unit

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Honda is improving for sure but the chassis will need to improve to compete with the Mercs

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Pierce89
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Re: Mclaren Chassis Vs Honda Power Unit

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PlatinumZealot wrote:Ever since 2012 McLaren has favoured tamer suspension systems to help Button.. I noticed that McLarens were no longer front end grip monsters since then.. Still decent turn in but not close to the top teams.
This is wrong. Button's driving style creates understeer so be actually sets his cars looser than Hamilton. It was a while back, but it was a direct Button quote.
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mrluke
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Re: Mclaren Chassis Vs Honda Power Unit

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First off, I have added the Singapore data to all graphs and made some corrections including accounting for races were pole was not set by Merc or RBR (doh).
Joseki wrote:I think that graph is a bit wrong, in China for example the McLaren duo didn't set a time in Q2 with new tyres and if you use the Q1 time JB set the result is very different. It may have happened a few other times like in Silverstone (best lape time for Alonso deleted) and in Hungary Fernando spun blocking everyone behind.
Thanks for that, good catch on China, I had missed that, it does make a difference to the graphs (you can refer back to the OP they will all update as I add more data).

While I have sympathy on your Silverstone point, other teams had their time deleted and even if Alonso's had remained he had used more track than anybody else to gain an advantage anyway.

As for Hungary, the spin then also prevented those following from improving on their laptimes as well.
mrluke wrote:... but to finish with another bold prediction based on data, I do not expect Mclaren to do as well at Singapore as they have at Belgium and Italy.
So with Singapore finished what can we conclude from Mclaren's performance?

(sorry this is going to be a long post)

Image

On first glance the above graph shows that RBR and Mclaren follow a similar trend vs the pole lap. However on a more detailed inspection you can see that the size of the gap between the 2 lines is not at all consistent.

The next graph takes the same RBR 16 line but provides a trace for Mclaren that represents the difference between each team. i.e. when the mclaren trace is high they are losing time to RBR and when the trace is low they are very close to RBR.

Image

If Mclaren had a consistent deficit to RBR then their graph would form a straight line, anywhere you get an overlap or movement in opposite directions shows a difference between the two teams.

As has been previously highlighted, from Baku to Italy, there is a general trend of Mclaren making progress against RBR.

Relative to RBR, Mclaren performed worse at Singapore than they did at both Spa and Monza.

Relative to Pole, Mclaren were slightly better at Singapore than Monza but much worse than at Spa. For me I am a little disappointed, I was expecting Mclaren's performance at Monza to be much more similar to their performance at Spa, if the data point had been right around where it was in 2014 that would complete the trend perfectly.

Looking at last season Hungary, Belgium and Italy were all similar performances but this year that was not the case.

In 2014 Mclaren were much better in Monza than Spa, in 2016 the opposite is true but in 2015 they performed equally at both venues.

Image

Composing this post I noticed that the comparison against RBR and against Pole both appeared to be split into two parts, the chart is below:

Image

From Australia to Canada (Austria?) Mclaren maintain a pretty consistent deficit to Mercedes suggesting their car is a fairly balanced package, like Mercedes.

From Canada onwards Mclaren lose the consistency with Mercedes, but now compare very consistently with RBR.

To me this would suggest that the Mclaren Chassis and PU were both pretty even up to Canada but that since this point they appear to have a PU weakness (like RBR). Or to look at it the other way around, RBR could have an improved Renault PU from around Canada. Or for a third option maybe the Mercedes unit has seen a step forward which now puts both teams at a deficit.

:?

I think all that we can conclusively say about Singapore is that it was inconclusive.

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hollus
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Re: Mclaren Chassis Vs Honda Power Unit

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If there is any hope of making sense of this, we need to take into account the special circumstances of both teams.
First, I think it could be fair to discard Monaco and Monza. McLaren stated early in the year that since 2016 was a test for 2017, they would concentrate in the car for the average track, no high downforce specials, no low downforce specials. In Monaco they also messed up the tires big time. Fair enough to ignore that datapoint? More on why discard Monza later...

The elephant in the room is that both teams had huge engine evolutions this year. Especially McLaren started the year with an engine that was forcing fuel saving at every race, moved to one which was less fuel critical and by now has an engine where they do not need to save fuel in most cases (drivers dixit).
Image
So maybe the large trend change around Canada was between a McLaren which had to forfeit its potential downforce in the interest of reducing drag and having some engine power during the race and a McLaren that could use most of its downforce potential once fuel stopped being critical (a change brought along by increases in engine power!). We are judging on quali times, but the cars qualify with a race setup. The first car would be the antithesis of downforcy Red Bull, the second car could have similar characteristics (still more than 1% behind).
And if fuel saving (or not fuel saving) made the change, one exception could maybe be Monza? In fact both Maccas were suspiciously high in top speed in Monza. What do the graphs look like sans-Monaco and sans-Monza?

I guess the real point is: could someone overlay the PU upgrades from both teams on those graphs?
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mrluke
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Re: Mclaren Chassis Vs Honda Power Unit

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If you can provide the information for PU upgrades I can overlay but I imagine that only takes account of token expenditure? I would expect at every race to have a new fuel or new oil which have shown to add significant power.

I am struggling to see that Mclaren at any point this year have run a significantly lower drag setup than their rivals. From images they typically run the same or more rear wing and we have a number of comments from the drivers that they have a more high downforce setup.

All of the teams are in the position that they could add more downforce to the car if they had more power, this is not unique to Mclaren and should not be treated as such. Thats the name of the game, to get as much downforce for as little drag as possible. Mercedes and RBR excel here.

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PlatinumZealot
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Re: Mclaren Chassis Vs Honda Power Unit

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RedBull got 0.2s a lap from fuel upgrade.
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PlatinumZealot
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If they had a mercedes engine they would be a little in front of redbull at the malaysia track based on my estimations.. (9 tenths improvement). So the chassis is still behind redBull but not by much. It is promising.
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