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Anyone know what Martin Brundle and David Coulthard was on about when they refered to McLarens's magic pedal? Was brought up in discussion when talking about the clutch pedal.

jason.parker.86 wrote:Anyone know what Martin Brundle and David Coulthard was on about when they refered to McLarens's magic pedal? Was brought up in discussion when talking about the clutch pedal.

F1 cars don't have clutch pedals, they have paddles=) The magic switch is probably doing same thing as on Mercedes, which was much discussed during Turkish GP -- basically it is way to switch several parameters at once to the predetermined preset.

jason.parker.86 wrote:Anyone know what Martin Brundle and David Coulthard was on about when they refered to McLarens's magic pedal? Was brought up in discussion when talking about the clutch pedal.

McLaren ran a "fiddle brake" which had a second brake pedal where the clutch pedal used to be when they ran manual gearboxes. It's role was to brake the inside rear wheel in corners to help traction. It was a crude form of driver-operated traction control.



You can see the fiddle pedal on the left in the position a clutch pedal would have been.

Slightly wrong I believe; it wasn't to help traction. It was to help brake the inside wheel so that there was less diff understeer.

Raymondo is correct : it was banned because the FIA determined that it was a form of 4 wheel steering.

I thought this secret pedal was used in the Hakkinen era, not this season?

Yes that was a long way back

Just_a_fan wrote:

jason.parker.86 wrote:Anyone know what Martin Brundle and David Coulthard was on about when they refered to McLarens's magic pedal? Was brought up in discussion when talking about the clutch pedal.

McLaren ran a "fiddle brake" which had a second brake pedal where the clutch pedal used to be when they ran manual gearboxes. It's role was to brake the inside rear wheel in corners to help traction. It was a crude form of driver-operated traction control.


You can see the fiddle pedal on the left in the position a clutch pedal would have been.

he was asking about this weekend, not something tha happened 10 years ago..

ell66 wrote:

Just_a_fan wrote:

jason.parker.86 wrote:Anyone know what Martin Brundle and David Coulthard was on about when they refered to McLarens's magic pedal? Was brought up in discussion when talking about the clutch pedal.

McLaren ran a "fiddle brake" which had a second brake pedal where the clutch pedal used to be when they ran manual gearboxes. It's role was to brake the inside rear wheel in corners to help traction. It was a crude form of driver-operated traction control.


You can see the fiddle pedal on the left in the position a clutch pedal would have been.

he was asking about this weekend, not something tha happened 10 years ago..

Sigh. He was asking about the commentary this weekend. The commentary was discussing a call to a driver asking for a button change in the car. Brundle and DC then mentioned the "magic button" on the Merc, referring to a radio call at the previous race (or the one before). Then there was mention of the magic pedal in the DC/Mika era McLarens. The fiddle brake was that "magic pedal" that was in place of the previous clutch pedal also referred to in the commentary. As DC was driving the car at the time it was relevant for Brundle to mention it to him. They may even have laughed a bit at the same time.

Thats pretty much it, except it was the magic paddle not pedal.

jason.parker.86 wrote:Anyone know what Martin Brundle and David Coulthard was on about when they refered to McLarens's magic pedal? Was brought up in discussion when talking about the clutch pedal.

They were referring back to an earlier qualifying session when the driver was told he could now use the 'magic paddle'. I didn't think that it was a McL driver who had received that instruction though.

It was Schuey, I think the commentators just got mixed up

I think it was in Spain Nico was told to use the "magic paddel". No idea what it is, Merc GP are very protective over the back of their steering wheel.

Wouldn't be too shocked to see Merc GP as the ones to beat next season. Very strongly suspect they always had a 3 year plan from day 1...

Wonder if the "magic paddle" is something that switches the engine mode up to blow more into the diffuser but they are limited to a few laps per gp?

jason.parker.86 wrote:Wouldn't be too shocked to see Merc GP as the ones to beat next season. Very strongly suspect they always had a 3 year plan from day 1...

Wonder if the "magic paddle" is something that switches the engine mode up to blow more into the diffuser but they are limited to a few laps per gp?

That's illegal.