He seems to know better than any other engineer or driver in the whole paddock how the system works...

But I think I can imagine why he's whinning so much. The RB6 is the slowest car on a straight line, although it's the fastest car overall. If he starts 1st and by the way Hamilton, for example, is 2nd and jumps him at the start, it's very very unlikely that he will be able to overtake.

I expect Mclaren to be around 15-20 km/h faster than RBR in Malaysia.

Mclaren have a couple of updates to the car for this race, im hoping its something that helps traction out of slow corners

5 minute interviews with Jenson and Lewis from today:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport...one/8599504.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport...one/8599542.stm

Not much directly relevant to the MP4-25, but Jenson reckoned they over-did the front-wing for the setup on the inters - that plus the drying track is why he came in. Also, his soft tires were definitely getting quite marginal towards the end. He also hopes it'll be easier to warm up the tires in Sepang and that the circuit will suit the car more, allowing for better qualifying.

Renault engine has estimate power of 750hp while Mercedes has about 780hp. Plus, Mclaren has their F-system to help increase their top speed.

When Renault come up with their improved engine and RBR come with their duct system, the difference between Red Bull and Mclaren is likely to be over 1 second easily. Vettel did a quite big mistake in his pole lap but still was more than 7 tenths faster than the fastest Mclaren.

Right now I don't know if it's plausible to even talk about "big four teams" because only 3 can put their both drivers in Q3. Mclaren seems to be more in the level of Renault, Williams and Force India.

No, seriously, Mclaren is the 3rd car atm but very far from the second(Ferrari) and much closer to the 4th(Mercedes). If Ron Dennis is a smart guy he should start developing the 2011 car now and try to extract the most out of a non-DDD car.

Sepang has some long and fast corners that should heat the tyres rather quickly.

Before getting a F-duct system, Red Bull should start by working on improving its reliability.

As for McLaren, they know what the issue with the car is. The gap is smaller than last year; I wouldn't discount them at all.

The ban is effective China not before.

The problem here is that the chances of McLaren being on the front row are very slim. Where are the team going to get that missing 7 tenths from? Mercedes have a better chance. We are yet to see their final package.

The car has one the best race pace in F1 today. I think getting the car to be equally fast or faster in qually is less of an issue. RB actually have real issues with reliability. In Bahrain, they said it was due to spark plug failure but Renault refuted that saying that was not enough to cause the problem Vittel had. In Melbourne, it was the brakes but he manufacturer refuted that as well here. Who knows what part of the car is going to give up in Malaysia.

thanks for your indepth insight
Well how long is mercedes planning to wait for their big package, its been talked about for a long time, lets just face it, they dont have

They don't, but Mercedes isn't Mclaren's problem. Your car is already faster than them, the real big problem is Red Bull and Ferrari. Mclaren had a crappy aero last year in the begining that became average in the end, the car won due to mechanical grip. This year the car doesn't seem good on mech grip and it is still average in aero. Eventually the Vettel's Red Bull will stop failing and will be very hard for any other car/driver to follow because their speed in low and high speed corners is amazing.

If Mclaren want to keep improving this car, they should invest in getting back to a good mech grip car imo. There are few aero tracks in F1 nowdays, the majority are stop and go tracks. I still don't understand how Mclaren lost it speed in low speed corners.

I suggest you wait to see how McLaren fares in Malaysia before talking.

Why do you think the aero is only average? Macca seem pretty upbeat about how their car will work in Malaysia...

The Mclaren is so average on aero that its 15 kph quicker than rbr on Australia's skimpy straights
In Malaysia and China that gap is going to get bigger by at least another 5 kph too.
If rbr didn't have the BS illegal ride height system they would be be no where right now.

Australia S3 has majority of corner taken at medium-high speed and Red Bull was more than 4 tenths faster in that sector. The good aspect of Sepang for Macca is the quite long straights.

That's partly due to snorkel system and partly due to better engine, but yes, Mclaren has less drag than RBR. What matters is the aero efficiency and by the gap of more than 7 tenths in Australia, it's not realistic to expect Mclaren to fight for the pole/win in normal dry conditions.

Guess what?! snorkel system is part of the aero efficiency and on tracks with long straights it will be the rbr that struggles and not McLaren.

The gap in qualifying is because of the BS illegal ride height adjuster only. You can also say its not realistic for rbr to fight for wdc / wcc because the car is always breaking. Besides Petrov was only 4 kph slower than McLaren on the straights so any updates they get will be small and won't make much difference. It could probably hurt the fuel consumption even.

i think the red bull is a fundamentally faster car over 1 lap than the mclaren, even without a ride height system it would be, the gap is so large it implies so, but on race pace the gap is pretty small i think, mclaren do well on high fuel and are very reliable it seems

This ride height adjuster seems like an excuse to me. Ron Dennis always come up with something to not make Mclaren look bad, remember the fuel saving story in Bahrain? I don't see other teams complaining about RBR ride height.

But, obviously, I don't know about this technical details. Let's see if Mclaren will be on pace when it have it's "adjuster" on the car.

Jonathan Neale doesn't seem to think the ride heigh adjuster is the be all and end all either.

Although frankly I wonder if he's benig entirely truthful because the difference in quali v the race has to be down to something (or a lot of little things I guess).

In anycase, the fact that the RB is so low in quali indicates something must be going on or they'd completely bottom out when fuel is added, wouldn't they?

And it's not Ron that's saying it either...

No? S3 has only 1 medium-high speed corner, it's Turn 14. Turn 13 and 15 are slower turns. I think McLaren is losing everything in Turn 15 as it lacks mechanical grip, which is much needed over there.

really sorry to go off topic but that line goes perfectly with your avatar

Would that be because you didn't look?
http://www.forumula1.net/2010/f1/f1-news/b...et+-+F1+News%29

There is a thread about ride heights here: http://forums.autosport.com/index.php?showtopic=126800

I' just like to add that McLaren's top speed was high also because they were not running as much downforce comparatively to other teams, according to Jenson.

McLaren's next step of the "transparent" engine cover fiasco

http://f1.gpupdate.net/en/photolarge.php?p...catID=1102-4458

Not only that but hamilton was 5khp quicker than button because he was always in the slipstream of other cars, i don't think hamilton would have been that quick on all the straights if he were out in front

Nonsense, he had plenty of time in free air and that was when he was setting his fastest times. The reason he was quicker was because he was playing catch up and having push. Button was out in front and managing his tyres, he had no need to push to the limit.

Clatter, chhatra was talking about Lewis not being so quick in a straight line, not in terms of overall lap time. I haven't checked but I would think that Lewis being in the slipstream of many cars is the reason his top speed is 5 kph more than Jenson's.

I think the fact that he was pushing to catch up is more than enough to account for the extra top speed.

Slipstream gives a much higher topspeed than pushing vs. normal driving.

Not with rev limited engines it doesnt, it does help get to that top speed quicker though.

In your opinion (just an estimate) how much in terms of extra speed do you think Lewis was gaining from slipstreaming?

As the engines are rev limited I don't believe he can gain any extra speed.

The teams have to take winds, slipstreaming, engine reliability (not bouncing off the limiter too often) etc into account when setting gear ratios.

This is from qualifying
Pos No Driver Time of Day Speed

1 2 Lewis Hamilton 17:30:41 309.8
2 1 Jenson Button 17:09:57 308.7
3 15 Vitantonio Liuzzi 17:18:07 306.6
4 12 Vitaly Petrov 17:03:19 305.6
5 21 Bruno Senna 17:07:58 305.4
6 14 Adrian Sutil 17:03:21 305.3
7 3 Michael Schumacher 17:17:43 304.0
8 11 Robert Kubica 17:31:31 304.0
9 4 Nico Rosberg 17:58:29 303.8
10 16 Sebastien Buemi 17:06:25 303.7
11 8 Fernando Alonso 17:04:44 303.3
12 20 Karun Chandhok 17:18:01 303.3
13 7 Felipe Massa 17:14:04 303.2
14 17 Jaime Alguersuari 17:41:55 302.8
15 19 Heikki Kovalainen 17:17:04 300.6
16 9 Rubens Barrichello 17:04:15 299.9
17 10 Nico Hulkenberg 17:05:00 299.7
18 18 Jarno Trulli 17:18:19 298.3
19 22 Pedro de la Rosa 17:07:59 297.2
20 24 Timo Glock 17:03:58 296.7
21 25 Lucas di Grassi 17:05:22 296.5
22 23 Kamui Kobayashi 17:40:27 296.0
23 6 Mark Webber 17:28:48 295.8
24 5 Sebastian Vettel 17:08:41 295.3

http://www.formula1.com/results/season/201...speed_trap.html

What was Lewis' top speed during the race?

They don't have that on the website

Could someone explain what was the transparent engine cover? I wasn't following formula 1 when this happened I don't think?

There was a reflection from the engine cover, which happened to look like the car on the far side as well. So there was a hilarious run of posts...

They can't change the ratios on the day so can't take the wind into account. If they were to gear the car for slipstreaming then they would be losing time the rest of the race.

Oh ok thanks

i think if i recall it was 310 to jenson's 305, the reason i mamde my earlier point is that hamilton was always a few clicks faster in all 4 of the speed traps, and the whole race he was behind other cars.

He wasn't behind cars the whole race. He had quite a few laps in clear air, especially after his second stop. What lap did he do his fastest speed, and where was he in relation to other cars at that time? I wish the FIA wouldn't lock the race data away after a few days.

Qualifying is the best indicator for the top speed of each car. Nobody wants to run behind somebody, it makes you lose a ton of time.

So it's fair to say that Mclaren had something around 13-15 km/h advantage over RBR on a track on which the set-up features lower downforce settings than Malaysia, for example.

Therefore, considering the higher DF necessary and the longer straights at Malaysia, I think Mclaren will be able to exploit more the F-duct on the MP4/25 and will be something around 15-20 km/h faster than RBR on the two big straights, unless one of them completely changes their set-up philosophy, something I think is not possible, given that the current configurations might be the ones that give them the best possible lap times for their given cars.

That's true, but if they don't allow for slipstreaming, and they're up to the rev limiter in normal running, overtaking becomes next to impossible, so they have to compromise.

It looked to me that when Lewis got close enough to the car in front to benefit from the slipstream, he closed up more quickly than normal, and that's how he was able to overtake.

Here it is, speedtrap:

They are running big exhaust opening in practice. like in Bahrain

I was trying to judge relative sector times a bit. Since Lewis was fastest, I could do this off the TV feed a bit. The Red Bulls seemed to be losing 0.6-0.7s in the final sector (!) relative to the MP4-25.

edit Since the final sector has long straights, that should be where we see the biggest gain from the "F-duct".

When comparing onboard laps the Redbull looked very unstable compared to the mclaren.