321apex wrote:
He kinda said something about DF but not clearly what he was alluding to or whom. Perhaps Bahrain is a track known to put premium on cars with rear grip and he felt McL don't have it while someone else does.
But really if that is the case, then perhaps he intentionally misleads in order to protect the benefit of the butterfly rear suspension, which they use and would prefer that if it was effective, no one else would get motivated enough to re-engineer their cars.
I am never the first one to believe what competitors or teams say in public. Reading between the lines is more effective.
It's common to see drivers saying "downforce" as meaning grip. Bahrain is a stop and go track, which means there is no way to make any pertinent conclusion about any car's rear downforce.
You can have an idea about who have more downforce by seeing who brakes later when under same conditions(which is not known in testings). However, as there is no high speed corner, you cant know if a car has more
rear downforce than other.
You can know, however, which car has more grip out of slow corners, but that is not downforce related. It's merely rear grip, dependent on some other factors.
That all said, I doubt Mercedes would have as much downforce as Mclaren. Brackley's car have a tighter coke-bottle than Mclaren but not that much more, and their nose
probably doesn't help it either. Then, the Mclaren has a very significant advantage with their lower wishbones...
I agree with you that this seems to be more a case of Button either using an inaccurate term, or "intentionally misleading" as you well put it.
