I disagree. Button isn't very good over one lap, even according to himself, and the team managed to get several front row lock-outs like Australia, Malaysia and Monza. Button also got his only pole for Mclaren that year in Spa. So the car was fast but unreliable and the team kept making errors in pit-stops etc hence the advantage was wiped away.ringo wrote: ↑Sat Dec 01, 2018 4:51 amThat 2012 car was not that great. It was like a supersonic fighter jet without avionics, depending too much on the driver to balance it on a knife edge to make it deliver lap time. This is what hamilton was doing with the car to get it to run at the front; hence why he was going over the limit many times to keep pace with redbull.
Button made this very same car look like a midfield car. So i disagree with the notion that somehow it was some top car that could be cruised, easy to drive, and manage gaps at the front. I agree though that it was one of the better mclarens in the past ten years.
I remember one of the cars that had a certain exhaust system fitted that Hamilton was able to get lap time out of at silverstone, but it wasn't drivable in Button's hands so they had to remove the update. It's these kinds of nonsense Mclaren keep repeating year in year out. They build a car that needs all the planets and their moons aligned with the driver under a shaman's trance for 300km to get a podium. This may be why Vandorne looked so mediocre this year, Alonso was balancing the marble on a spoon's back to get lap time out of it.
Funnily enough just a couple of weeks later this link confirms the view above...Nonserviam85 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 29, 2018 3:03 pmA very experienced aerodynamics engineer (who is not working in F1 anymore) told me in an casual chat that in his humble opinion McLaren's main issue is the shape of sidepods-bargeboards they are using because it does not work very well with the High-Rake concept. He was also questioning McL's decision of using a small inlet and not increasing the size of the inlet in order to reduce the size of the sidepods. Maybe the late PU change didn't allow them to optimize the cooling packaging this year and we might see a complete different design next year.
I guess that settles that, and once again seems to confirm you can't trust anything that comes out of Boullier's mouth.Apparently, an aerodynamic problem produced too much drag on the car and the lack of ability to maintain downforce in corners were the main issues on the car. McLaren's executive chairman and shareholder Sheikh Mohammed bin Essa Al Khalifa confirmed the problem was permanent unless they completely changed the chassis.
Tim Goss was let go in April. Which may imply he was sacked coinciding with a missed deadline."[Nothing would have fixed it. And had we discovered that in April we would have had a b-car. But it was too late," he told motorsport.
Not their biggest problem of course but it just shouldn't happen to any team on the grid, its just a bit of daft cock-up to have to deal with at the best of times never mind when you know all eyes are going to be on you after the engine switch, which is probably why it sticks in the memory rather than because of the severity of the issue if you know what I mean.
They might even have an entire new bell housing designed for next year given they revised the packaging.PhillipM wrote: ↑Thu Dec 06, 2018 11:03 pmIf there's barely any difference in the ratios required, and the performance difference is tiny, why would you bother changing the gearset given you're using a hacked together box designed for the Honda anyway?
Much bigger issues and gains by spending the money elsewhere, especially when a new gearbox was already in the works.
It most certainly was clear that they switched to next year's car long back and that made them move backwards for this year. There was no point in spending resources on this year's car when they realized that the car is not what they wanted to build. Hope they get it right right and I am optimistic that, the car would be a 4th place holder.