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.NathanOlder wrote: ↑Mon Jan 07, 2019 1:40 pmBut 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.NathanOlder wrote: ↑Mon Jan 07, 2019 1:40 pmBut 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
Yeah, great insights. It's absolutely ridiculous that they haven't found it earlier.Dipesh1995 wrote: ↑Mon Jan 07, 2019 7:12 pmhttps://youtu.be/Uu5IgVB9dUk
Insightful video from Marc Priestley about McLaren’s 2018 issues and looking ahead into 2019.
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. "
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.Chicane wrote: ↑Tue Jan 08, 2019 5:59 pm.........................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/
RonDennis wrote: ↑Tue Jan 08, 2019 7:39 pmLet'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 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 08, 2019 7:39 pmLet's hope they're better organized then last year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c37Fc7QFkjQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMu7G7AN-XQ
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.Manoah2u wrote: ↑Wed Jan 09, 2019 10:23 pmRonDennis wrote: ↑Tue Jan 08, 2019 7:39 pmLet'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.