De Jokke wins the innaugural 'guess the McLaren launch date' competition. Werks prototype is 2nd

It was a work of art post Nürnburgring. Most McLarens are.

"Even world champion Jenson Button wasn’t immune from the problems: stuck in his car on the icy, sloping MTC car park, the team loaned him a rock-solid Mercedes-Benz E-Class 320 estate for his journey home."
Fair-weather-driver

Is it me,or is mclaren pushing button alot more than lewis,even on their web page its a lot of button.I know he is the world champion but.

They listened too much Sugababes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJDGcxAf9D8

Well done De Jokke. Next question, got any ideas where it is? Website just says UK.


...It's not Croydon is it?

i dont think its a factor of pushing button ahead of lewis, we all know lewis at mclaren is us in our arm chairs, comfy, and knows every little in and out. i think they are just informing us of how hes settling in which by his own twitter posts he seems to be. its good to hear, as a lewis fan i have no worries about button getting most mentions right now as i myself are more interested to know how hes feeling in the team as i expect him to deliver come bahrain qualy.

2days after my birthday the mclaren launch, i was really hoping to wake up and wait for the presentation pictures to pop up whilst eating my birthday breakfast and then enjoy some nice debate on the beauty and technical sides to the car

As there are 33 pages to this thread, and the fact i'm lazy, please could anyone tell me if we have any new sponsors/partners now that we're fielding the current WDC?

You'll find out on the 29th.

McLaren are paranoid about driver equality. Reason?: 2007.

so they favour Button, that nobody could say they favour Hamilton?

This would be paranoid

IMO McLaren gives Hamilton a rest from standing in the spotlight

I think they just want to get the mileage now while he is world champion. I know he is technically world champion all year but his publicity value will drop once he starts racing Lewis in the same machinery.

lol thats very possible, so they better milk the Button as much as they can right now

Buttons publicity value already has dropped,
since Michaels Comeback was announced.
everywhere you can read and hear about the challenge
Michael <> Lewis
Lewis <> Alonso
Alonso <> Michael
Alonso/ Schumacher /Hamilton are the ones who draw the interest
but Button?

Lewis is far more popular than Jenson

It has being

Lewis <> Button

A little byrd told me that Lewis broke up with Nicole bcs he heard that she was raised there.

I know its been covered,but why would mclaren change the team around,why mess with what work with your best driver.I would love to hear what lewis has to say about that.

My guess would be that both RE's had been in post for 15 years so it was time to move them on, and it's best to start Jense off with the RE he'll have for the next 3 years. And Andy knows Lewis already of course.

It is the part of the process, Tim Goss also worked as race engineer before this role.

He (Jenson) still has quite a bit of mileage left in the UK though.

I think: just like the 24 at the MTC. Let's wait and see

Can't remember Lewis going on the countrys most popular chat show (even though it's shit)

The fact that everyone's talking about Lewis, Alonso and Michael is fantastic IMO, it lets Jenson get on with his job and when he comes from under the radar it will be even more sweeter

In all seriousness though i can envisage a scenario where Lewis, Nando and Michael are that wrapped up in each other that Jenson, Massa and Vettel just go along quietly and gazump the lot of them

If that was to happen there would be some tears shed on here, Kleenex would be snowed under with the demand

Kleenex will be snowed under after the first race cos all the button supporters will be stocking up for a lonnnnnnnng season haha

That makes absolutely no sense.... You're saying that Lewis, MSC and FA will only try to beat each other without thinking about 1st place? They are wrapped up in each other because everyone knows they are the 3 most talented drivers and will be favorites to win the race not because of their names and hype.

lol yea...there are so many personal battles that I dont even think it will play much in the drivers minds when they race.... all they will be concentrated on is going as fast as possible and winning the whole race

Alonso, Lewis and Michael are not obsessed with each other. They will not focus just on each other, they will try to win the race, no matter if they have to beat each other for that or Jenson, Massa and Vettel.

What about somewhere that symbolises Britain and design / engineering / innovation... London Eye?

Did we ever find out what the problems were with the MP4-24?

Well, McLaren finished the season with a winning car. So I'd say: yes.

Yes but that car had kers. No one on this forum can 100% say this new car would be good, hence I reserve judgement. As far as I am concerned this is like the beginning of 09. We don't know how the car is going to be. Only RB and Merc fans can have a clear indication their car is going to be good.

anybody know what Mark Slade is going to do? he will not be travelling with the race team to the races so is he MTC based now? or leaving???

I believe Kers was more of an handicap...without KERs the car would have probably had better handling and aero which would have been more important than Kers in most races I believe


James Allen said Slade is still with Mclaren and his new position will be clear in coming weeks

As far as I can see (and I'm no engineer) the shortcomings of the 24 (which were obviously far worse at the start of the 09 season) were due to 2 main things:

1. The lack of time spent on developing it during the later months of 2008 (when the team was battling for the WDC). It was simply under-developed in comparision to its rivals. I'm optimistic we won't have that problem heading into 2010.
2. The lack of the double diffuser being incorporated right at the start. Other teams had incorporated it into their car concept from the start and obviously it had a big effect on the entire aero concept of the car. McLaren had to backwards engineer it into an existing chassis not designed to accomodate it. And this is where it was badly compromised. Everyone will now be starting with this now, so again, no issues there.

Ultimately, you cannot guarantee anything in this game, but I'm hopeful that we will start the year in a stronger position than last year!!

^ Yep! Roll on new season, c'mon Mclaren!

KERS wasn't a tool which only helped to hide the weaknesses of the car and has only benefits. It was a serious reason for many weaknesses. This KERS-hype still uses to pop up, so I had to step in (again): http://wp.me/pzSiv-gb

I don't think this holds because it was reported that McLaren just jumped to a whole new philosphy that is new to the team.

I think they gave up trying to understand what was wrong with the MP4-24 original concept but it would be nice to hear it as fact from McLaren.

The car definately didn't match the wind tunnel or CFD expectation, that was the most worrying part, that the car didn't match what their tools were saying.

Main problem was front wing endplate airflow management. When they introduce complete new endplates at Nurburgring it was rocketship...

I thought that the car did match the predictions? It's just that McLaren grossly underestimated what sort of downforce would be required.

As for the faults with the car - here's my take:

*The FWPs (initially) were deflecting air inside the wheels causing the diffuser to stall in certain conditions.

*The KERS gave woeful weight distribution and it's packaging meant that there was no undercutting on the sidepods (combined with the need to have a massive arse).

exactly
There were more problems with the 24. Firstly they got the weight distribution wrong. Funny thing was people in here already mentioned their design looked strange, when the car broke cover. Because compared to the other cars it was obvious that mclaren didnt put as much energy moving weight forward with the design they choose. And since all the talk in the technical articles was about how, the teams need move weight forward for 2009, people in here got suspicious something was wrong and it was.
Sec. basicly they got the frontwing wrong. The frontwing is maybe the most important component on the car. It decides how well the diffuser and rearwing works. And they got it wrong. So they needed to create a new frontwing and then adapt the other components to that. Thats what whitmarsh meant when he talked about new aero concept. Especially the endplates needed to be redesigned, as it was obvious, looking at the good teams designs, they got it wrong. For most of the year, even redbull had similar endplates to Mclaren, but they ended up changing them also. If they found the exact reason, why the rearend aero was "turned of" in high speed corners, i dont know but i hope. But the new endplates definitely helped solve that problem a lot. In the end we ended up with a car that was pretty decent. Not the best in high speeds, but a lot better then they started out with. It had good traction i slow sections and good top speed so.

About the discussion in here about Hamiltons input, and if he will have and advantage. All he can do is give input. Until it runs on track he will have no idea of the cars characteristics. Ok he knows the previous Mclaren cars characteristics, which will be an advantage. But he will have no idea how the cars handles before he tries it. And him giving input to the engineers will not change that at all.

yeah the car did match the CDF predictions, Gary Anderson mentioned this in one of the autosport issues....
it's just Mclaren had completely misjudged how much more performance other teams get out of their cars, and also how much of a negative impact KERS had....

exactly

Not at Spa, didn't even get out of Q2.

I think the "stalling" issue was solved: It's just that the car still had a fundamental lack of downforce... which makes Hamilton's performance in Suzuka even the more impressive.

Its so easy to blame kers, but every car was built with kers in mind. BrawnGP were ready to bolt their kers were it not for the collapse of Honda. The fact the MP4-24 had the most radical changes in comparison to other kers cars Ferrari, Renault and BMW shows the team got it wrong from the outset. From the front wings to the diffusers everything was just wrong. They guys in woking even admitted they were conservative in their designs.

2010 is an unknown season and the champagne should be put on ice. Like I said only RB and Merc can say with confidence they are certain their cars would contend.

Mac have said they would bring out a triple complex diffuser which is great. However, the only thing that worries me is this talk about the double diffuser being banned for 2011. I suspect that would be the handy work of Ferrari who are hedging their bets against getting beat in 2010 and rather build a car to challenge would rather remove the advantage of other cars like Mac, Merc and RB.

I think some of the problem was that they messed up the wing settings on the car. In practice they tried using less downforce to be faster in S1 and S3 but then for qualifying they went with using more wing to be quicker in S2. That didn't work out as anticipated though so they were slower than most cars in S1 and S3 but the car still didn't have enough downforce to post a competitive S2 time.

Question:

It has already been asked before I guess but is Mercedes going to deliver less powerfull engines to Mclaren than to their own team or do you guys think they'll bet on two horses for the title to beat the likes of ferrari and rbr.

Professionalism comes before all this BS. They have a contract, on which I am sure there are engine performance clauses, and they will stand by it.

Sector 2 is where most time is made up, though. Even the Force India without KERS was incredibly quick in top speeds.

That's what was I going to say. They increased DF levels for qualifying and that meant game over.

Since 2007 (when Raikkonen won the race by choosing less downforce than Massa, Alonso and Hamilton), it's been clear that at Spa there's much more time to be achieved through S1 and S3 than on S2.

No, not really. Because, they had big upgrade for high speed corners at Singapore. So...