Mclaren MP4/19 Problems

[Monstrobolaxa]

....have been a little hidden for the last couple of weeks......exams....still have 2..... grrrrrrrrrrrrr

Irvingthien asked how the twin clutch gearbox works......well....it eliminates the time lost between gear changes....in a normal gearbox......you have a gear selected and you use the clutch to change from one gear the the next....in Mclarens case having 2 clutchs is an advantage cause imagine that you're in 2nd gear....and the gear box already has the 3rd gear pre selected....when you change gear one clutch opens and the other one closes....so there is no time lost with the clucthing and de-clutching process.

About Mclarens lack of performance.....if they're not hidding anything..... ....well let me through something into the discussion....in 2002 Jaguar suffered from lack o rigity in the monocoque specially in the suspension pick-up points.......during cornering the forces would slightly deform the monocoque....which would change the suspension geometry......this also happen to BAR a few years back.....

Another thing...is if the problems between the engine and chassis are true....this could mean that the MP4/19 lacks in chassis stiffness.......

[rodlamas]

News from Kimi, souds good for Mclaren

"Everything went like it was so suppose to. I drove over 200 laps within the two days, without ANY technical problems. We have clearly moved forward. Dont count us out of the WDC hunt."

"Every now and then you have a test session, in which everything just goes wrong. That happened to us in Barcelona."

"We know exactly what went wrong (broke?) in Barcelona and we immediately fixed it, so it will never happen again."

"Now, the car is better in every aspect. The most important thing was to understand what went wrong in Barcelona and what needed to be done to fix it. Once we figured that out, we already got to the halfway of solving the problem."

Engine-wise he stated:

"We are not on the level of BMW yet, but we are not far behind either. At this stage it is most important for us to make sure the engine is reliable by Melbourne. Once we have achieved that, we start pushing for more performance."

[Irvingthien]

Everything went like it was so suppose to. I drove over 200 laps within the two days, without ANY technical problems. We have clearly moved forward.

The problems with they had testing their car was in Barcelona, not in Jerez. I think they've tested the 19 in Jerez before. However they could have solved their problem.
Thanks for the explanation of the twin clutch gear box, monstro.

[rodlamas]

They had run well at Jerez before Barcelona.

But in Barcelona some new reliability problems started to appear. It doesn´t matter anymore which problems they were because they are now solved.

The thing is: everybody is saying that the Renault car is faster than the Williams, than the Mclaren etc. But Reanult say that they´ll not be on the top this year and that other teams have been playing with fuel loads. Oh, winter testing.........

I can only say one thing: Ferrari is not going to be where many people expect it to be. They are definitly going to be behind many others as Bridgestone cannot push their development as fast as Michelin due to their lack of teams.

Michelin tyres are much faster over the first lap and then this should obligate Ferrari to run low fuel on qualify (and then have to stop more) or they will have to content themselves with the third/fourth row of the grid.

But talking again about the MP4/19, Kimi said to not discount them of the WDC fight. And as Kimi is not JV or Irvine, Mclaren should be well on the pace in 3 weeks time in Oz.

[Ifan]

Hi all,

Does someone able to help us to update about McLaren MP4/19 and what they are doing now?

I'm just so curious, why do they so quite... No news.. No tests...No press release eventhough from someone from their team (drivers, principal, MD, etc.) Is there any clue what are they doing now? Do they have a kind of "hidden" agenda?

I believe that all of F1 teams are wondering what they are doing now. McLaren is the most ambisious team to take every rewards in this season after several years in waiting for the championship!

Or McLaren will make everybody surprise in the Albert Park, Melbourne.... and then in every race!

Please someone tell anything about the recent news of McLaren.. Thanks

[Scuderia_Russ]

A few links... http://www.mclarenracing.com

[rodlamas]

You want to know about Mclaren.....

Here it goes some new info:

There is an interview with Norbert Haug on f1total.com (in german) in which he says They´ve had problems with the carbon gearbox and with one engine, but these is now past. That´s why Mclaren, who is in Valencia running something lose to what thy´ll run in Melbourne, is running reliably.

But the main problems are not reliability not even engine power. They are not extracting the downforce they would like from the front wing. So to get a gooda balance they have to run with low downforce at the rear, this obviously generates problems at circuits like Barcelona, where aero eficiency is very important.

And also DC said: "From the second lap onwards we can run at the same pace of Williams and Renault." That means that they have a problem generating heating at the rear tyres, which acheive optimum temperature by the second lap. That was the case also with the 17/17D.

But Haug completed by saying: "We do not intend to be WC of testing."

More teams are joinning the test at Valencia today so they can give us a clearer picture. Mclaren is testing also next week at Imola, together with Williams where they are going to simulate a race weekend, just like they did last year.

We shall wait and see.

[Guest]

I have to correct you, the only thing that Norbert Haug said in that interview was that they have had problems with the new gearbox and an engine problem. The story about the frontving not producing enough downforce and the story about them not beeing able to get the michelins up to temperature, is not from that interview with Haug, but from an article in a german magazine which rely fully on their own analysis, rumors and gossip in the paddock.

[Guest]

I have to correct you, the only thing that Norbert Haug said in that interview was that they have had problems with the new gearbox and an engine problem. The story about the frontving not producing enough downforce and the story about them not beeing able to get the michelins up to temperature, is not from that interview with Haug, but from an article in a german magazine which rely fully on their own analysis, rumors and gossip in the paddock.

Indeed. Rumors I cannot digest myself cuz the MP4-19 front-wing is basically of the same concept of that on MP4-18. Had they discovered in 18 that they lacked front-end grip they would have taken another different design approach front-end/wing wise on 19. So I don't buy that lack of front-end grip story/crap...

The tyre heat up story is another mstery to me...cuz that's a problem they had with 17/17D & mclaren know exactly why. Actually it was rear suspension geometry related. 17/17D was designed such that it "saves" its rear tyres & that brought performance advantages in race trim but in qualifying it was problematic bringing the tyres to optimum temperature in 1 lap! So what mclaren did in 18 & subsequently 19 was to add an upper rear suspension element in order to help "heat-up" the tyres more quickly. I guess that worked well on 18 & so they adopted that suspension geometry on 19...

If Mclaren MP4-19 cannot "heat-up" its tyres for 1 lap properly then I'd conceed they've screwed up(ever since 2001/2002 in that respect actually)!

By the way I gathered the 19B should feature a different suspension arrangement to offer more "grip"... maybe that hints to a "flaw" they've discovered already on 19A...

[rumpelstulskin]

the characteristic slow start of michelin's last year as much more pronounced in coulthard than ralph or the renault for instance. any thoughts as to whether that was mclaren's problem alone?

[Guest]

You want to know about Mclaren.....

Here it goes some new info:

There is an interview with Norbert Haug on f1total.com (in german) in which he says They´ve had problems with the carbon gearbox and with one engine, but these is now past. That´s why Mclaren, who is in Valencia running something lose to what thy´ll run in Melbourne, is running reliably.

I just saw a pic on AtlasF1 of the gearbox case of the MP4-19 siiting in the McLaren garage in Melbourne, and it clearly looks like a metal gearbox casing to me. No CF!

[pyry]

they went damn fast before christmas and after it, and then they are 2 seconds slower on the same tracks after that? how the hell could that be possible? they somehow made their car slower, i dont think so. has anyone considered the idea that they just run with say 50kg more ballast, it drops their speed dramatically but doesnt compromise any of their testing.

[drspeed]

If things went wrong after they introduced something new, they could always have went for what they've been doing well with before. So it's kind of bizzare that they cant go any quicker.

About running heavier ballast... i never thought of that before, but somehow it does make sense considering that they're having trouble with smoking, overheated disc brakes.

But could it be that they're running deliberately slower even in friday?????

[Becker4]

this last race did not bode well at all . . . . clearly they are behind the pace of williams, renault, and ferrari. any ideas on what exactly the problems are, and what they will do about them?

[Guest]

this last race did not bode well at all . . . . clearly they are behind the pace of williams, renault, and ferrari. any ideas on what exactly the problems are, and what they will do about them?

Well we saw the blowup of Kimi... and that's with the HP down due to reliability concerns

Norbert Haug said it was due to water pressure problems and that they will report what specifically happened, to the media, later

I guess McLaren wasn't sandbagging after all... It was pretty funny to see DC's car go bouncy on Q2 tho