2019 Mclaren F1 Team - Renault

[NathanOlder]

But surely Mercedes and Mclaren are direct competitors in the road car business as they produce very similar cars. yet they had a partnership for 20yrs

[Peter1919]

But surely Mercedes and Mclaren are direct competitors in the road car business as they produce very similar cars. yet they had a partnership for 20yrs

McLaren's launch of a road car division was one of the main factors in pushing Merc to buy their own F1 team and sell their Mclaren shares.

[Jolle]

But surely Mercedes and Mclaren are direct competitors in the road car business as they produce very similar cars. yet they had a partnership for 20yrs

McLaren was part of the Daimler corporation (a 40% stake with the intention to go all the way). One of the reasons for their spil was a difference in opinion for the upcoming supercar. McLaren wanted something high tech, mid engined (what would bedome the MP4/12C) and Mercedes more something in the line of the SLR (front engined, luxury sports car). So after they announced their split in '09, Mercedes contractes Steyr to build the SLS bodywork, with an AMG badge instead of the McLaren one.

[M840TR]

Mclaren and Mercedes still aren't direct competitors. One sells mid-engined track focused supercars, the other mostly luxury sedans and family saloons. It had more to do with how Ron and Whitmarsh ran the team. in 8 years the factory Merc has won more than twice the championships they did with Mclaren in 16, and is dominating the sport since half a decade; these stats say it all really. Never mind the spygate saga.

[Dipesh1995]

Insightful video from Marc Priestley about McLaren’s 2018 issues and looking ahead into 2019.

[RonDennis]

https://youtu.be/Uu5IgVB9dUk

Insightful video from Marc Priestley about McLaren’s 2018 issues and looking ahead into 2019.

Yeah, great insights. It's absolutely ridiculous that they haven't found it earlier.

[Chicane]

Mclaren had three tasks to resolve their aero issue

1)Identifying the nature of the issue.

2) Identifying the cause of the issue.

3) Coming up with a solution towards resolving the issue.

They found out loss of downforce (read inconsistent) at the rear during cornering at Bahrain however they understood the root cause of the issue, only after the summer break by which time it was too late to come up with a solution especially since the solution needed a fundamental change.

Managing front tyre wake is the holy grail in f1 which is an open wheel racing. These big tyres now wreck havoc by producing massively turbulent air flow behind them. Any development in the bargeboard area without fixing the issue would have been pointless.


2019 rules advocate front wings with significantly reduced outwash potential and repositioned bargeboards. The midfield is where the action will be because the top three are in another league. Will be interesting to see how Mclaren will fare as to how cleverly they interpret the 2019 aero regulations.

[alexx_88]

Anybody coming to autosport on Saturday? Lando and Carlos are going to be there asking with the WRC grid

[RonDennis]

But where had the McLaren engineers gone wrong? Stella explains, "Our 2017 model was a good foundation. We wanted to develop that further. In certain corners, we lost massively to the Red Bulletins in 2017. We wanted to turn off that, but have transferred this weakness to the new car. In retrospect, we've gone too far in some things and created some aerodynamic issues that put us in a dead end. "

The McLaren MCL33 could not maintain the contact pressure in curves over the entire course from turning to accelerating. To keep the downforce reasonably stable, McLaren made do with the mallet method. Bigger wings. They drove the air resistance upwards. And that cost top speed. The McLaren were among the slowest cars on the straight.

With the problem of fluctuating downforce McLaren was not alone. Stella pushes the phenomenon on the wider cars. "The larger front wheels produce greater turbulence than they did before 2017. The main task of aerodynamics today is to get a handle on this turbulence. The wider subsoil exacerbates the problem. Because it contributes more to the overall output than in the past. "According to Stella, this is also the secret of the top teams:" Anyone who manages to control the downforce better over the entire corner is in a different category. "

[Chicane]

.........................McLaren chasing reliability ahead of winter testing..............................

“I don’t want to share in detail some of the things we’re doing differently this offseason than we did last season,” Brown said. “We are doing things differently, to be more prepared, not just with performance but we had a lot of reliability issues going into Barcelona testing last year. So we have taken some measures to get ahead of that.

“We will continue to develop as all F1 teams do, on a weekly basis, and we’ll bring to Australia our most developed performance that we’ve been doing here since we started developing the car and having reliability programs to make sure [it is better].

“One of the reasons why we were slower to bring performance (in 2018) is because we had reliability issues. You roll off the truck in Barcelona, instead of being able to get straight down to performance, you’re having issues — wheel nut issues, heating issues — you then stop focusing on performance and you start focusing on reliability.

https://racer.com/2019/01/08/mclaren-ch ... r-testing/

[marmer]

.........................McLaren chasing reliability ahead of winter testing..............................

“I don’t want to share in detail some of the things we’re doing differently this offseason than we did last season,” Brown said. “We are doing things differently, to be more prepared, not just with performance but we had a lot of reliability issues going into Barcelona testing last year. So we have taken some measures to get ahead of that.

“We will continue to develop as all F1 teams do, on a weekly basis, and we’ll bring to Australia our most developed performance that we’ve been doing here since we started developing the car and having reliability programs to make sure [it is better].

“One of the reasons why we were slower to bring performance (in 2018) is because we had reliability issues. You roll off the truck in Barcelona, instead of being able to get straight down to performance, you’re having issues — wheel nut issues, heating issues — you then stop focusing on performance and you start focusing on reliability.

https://racer.com/2019/01/08/mclaren-ch ... r-testing/

Stable engine unless Renault are making huge changes and the wheel nut issue is almost so random I doubt it will happen again to them.

[RonDennis]

Let's hope they're better organized then last year.

[Manoah2u]

Let's hope they're better organized then last year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c37Fc7QFkjQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMu7G7AN-XQ

yeah, quite frankly, i think that video sums up mclaren nowadays pretty picture perfect.

[makecry]

Let's hope they're better organized then last year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c37Fc7QFkjQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMu7G7AN-XQ

They are already better than they were at the beginning of the year when it comes to race operations. They have had good pitstops apart from one or two odd situations and decent strategy.

[RonDennis]

Let's hope they're better organized then last year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c37Fc7QFkjQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMu7G7AN-XQ

yeah, quite frankly, i think that video sums up mclaren nowadays pretty picture perfect.

Well, I have to say that they have been operating a lot better last season. Good tactics and at the end of the season I even saw them getting two cars in the top 10 of fastest pit stops. I'm wondering when Seidl will be announced, seems unlikely that they will do that at the launch of the car.