Well I've been quite a vocal critic around here of Lacey.

He isn't good enough to be head of aero and he isn't proven to be the best in his discipline.

He got the concept of the car fundamentally wrong. We must have been the only idiots who didn't even understand the front aero solution required esp FWEP's.

I still believe we dont know what went wrong. People talk of wonderful development, but when you actually look back that was alot of development which was actually taking us even further the wrong way. All that development in the 1st half of the season was a waste of time goind further down the wrong path. Recall Whitmarhes words, they had to pull back and completely switch to another concept because they didn't understand what was going on and in essence went on to say they just had to blindly copy what others were doing because sometimes it just works.

Illey is an improvement. You may say the F60 wasn't great in his hands. BUT it had a better aero concept than the McLaren and hardly any development due to strategic decisions. The only real flaw the F60 had was the gearbox shape which blocked them from deploying an effective double diffuser, but that was just pure luck that McLaren had designed their gearbox the way they did and the way Ferrari did because neither of them expected the double diffuser area to be exploited.

I still don't think hes the right man, but it is an improvement.

I wish Lacey would still stay on the team though because its pretty likely he's a better aerodynamicist than members of the team he was leading.

Your post suggests that Lacey actually designed the cars in his position as head of aero. This cannot be more far from reality. I believe his job was no more than managing that department. He was an overseer but it was required that he had technical knowledge of what his staff were doing but it is not required that he is the best technically. It is possible that he wasn't very good at managing that department but we just don't know...

Exactly, and that's how it's been for a while now, with Ferrari always having the superior aero concept while McLaren always tried catching up by slapping on more and more downforce. I think this can only be good news for McLaren. I think last year proved that, both cars with KERS it was the Ferrari with the better design.

Good riddance to lacey!


I never was a fan of his and like I predicted he would be fired.

If only these guys had 0 to 5 star ratings like in Grand Prix Manager - then we'd know if this was a step up or not!

On a serious note, does anyone know whether the changes in McLaren this off season are normal staff turnover for an F1 operation (and it's just that, with ever increasing fan analysis, we are seeing it more whereas before it was hidden) or if this is a lot of changes? Seems like the latter to me, but I'm no expert, and that is a slight worry. Even if the changes are improvements in personel, the sheer volume could be an issue.

The prat perch
http://twitpic.com/z1t86

So, this countdown thing then, not really all that thrilling is it?

See the engine cover? Old or not so?

Old. Very old. But it has sparked (yet more) online speculation about a new livery involving white and red...
Maybe they are just creating mischief.

Its actually useless. I seriously dont understand the teams. They talk and talk about, how they need bring the sport closer to the fans. But they do nothing. The twit thing, is a good idea. But we need better info then this. Why every team dont have one person assigned only to bring the fans closer to the sport, i dont understand. Someone to do the twit, facebook, pics, small interviews stuff like that. The positive feedback they would gain from such a person would be The fans wants more insight. Give it to them. It would be so easy

It might still be silver, overexposed because of the poor quality camera used.

I think the red is a result of the lighting.

I'm not entirely sure what the red bits are. They seem to be vertical panels coming down from the rear edge of the engine cover and they just don't normally exist do they?

what are you'se on about ... it's the engine cover of Prost's MP4-4 that Hamilton drove to the TAG event a few weeks back. The car was sitting in the race bays for a wee while while they got it ready to fire-up.
Either it is still sitting there right now getting put back into it's box, or it's an oldish photograph.

As for misunderstanding the twitter pictures, I am not sure anyone expected 700pages of drawings to be posted as a pdf ... so i don't see the problem, it's a bit of lightweight fun, show a few odds and ends until the launch.

EDIT: MP4-2C ... it was the MP4-4 he was supposed to drive at Goodwood, till Senna blew it up.

True,

you can see an old "Mika" wing in the reflection of the pit wall setup.

No, that the engine cover from Sena`s car, and in right you can see the reflection of Mika`s car. there aren`t any news of MP4-25, just pit wall, and some history.

It's from an MP4-5 that was started in the bay on Wednesday

He lives

hes back , should we say congrat with your promotion lol

congrats man lol!

Why don't we just say congratulations to Andy on his promotion and hope he doesn't reject it.
Anyway welcome back Andy.

Looking good so far!

Confirmed. Just checked the full size view.

It seemed more than usual staff shuffling. It looked much more major - at least from the outside - I seriously suspect it was largely influenced by the need to meet the agreed budget ceiling that is supposed to kick in next year with the attendant reduction in staff. I also think the reshuffling is designed to lay the foundation to meet this target as smoothly as possible whilst not negatively impacting their competitive edge. It is much more sesnible to do this during off-season than in-season, but I still expect more changes maybe not so dramatic to take place during the season.

I suspect that for this reason, they are going to start working on the 2011 car rather earlier than usual so as to take full advantage of all the resources at their disposal right now and complete the exercise before the start of next season.

All these are pure specualtions on my part.

That's something aggressive design as they promised.

Maybe a bit more wind tunnel work and we're good to go.

New nick name: the beige box.

Maybe it's a prototype for a replacement for Haug?

Ahh! I see where you're going with that. Could the quickest car of 2010 really end up being called the 'blob'?

i think robby gordon is the best at that, that ive stumbled across

just a random one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWEkGCdtu3U

and improptu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq8YDuIPtpg...player_embedded

i just found this by coincidence, searching for mp4-25, i dont know but i tried search on the f1tech forum but cant find the mclaren employee

"The story goes like this - we all know that McLaren has had problems with high-speed corners, particularly last year. They could never figure out why, but they knew the car wasn't doing what all the CFD and wind tunnel tests said it should do. Supposedly they finally figured out last year that at certain speeds the airflow over the wing or diffuser was sort of stalling, creating this pocket of still air that formed around the wing and essentially travelled around the track with the car. This meant the air that was moving was going around this "dead" pocket of air, not hitting the wing and that was why they'd lose downforce all of a sudden. At lower and higher speeds, everything worked just fine, but at a certain speed in between, everything went wrong. The flip side, though, is that when they lost the downforce, they also lost a lot of drag, so when they figured that out, some bright bloke of course immediately said "let's do something with this". After some fiddling around, they figured out how to control it, meaning that they could then create this "dead zone" at whatever speed they wanted; for example, when headed down the straight.

The info came from a McLaren worker bee who was posting at F1tech, who also posted some very nice pics of himself at work, just before he was fired. So was it true? No idea - the guy was supposedly a carbon fiber tech, so I don't know why he'd be in on such a secret, but then who knows what gets talked about at the cafeteria there.

Anyway, it was a fun bit of speculation if nothing else, and we'll all know soon enough if there was anything to it."

http://forum.grandprix.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10801

EDIT

Sounds like falls information.
"Perhaps this dead zone really is nothing but disinformation after all. That McLaren / Pizza Express carbon-fibre bloke who started all this has already admitted as much."

This 'dead-zone' concept has come up before. It would be good if it could be confirmed either way once and for all. It is afterall so specific. Either they wanted to smoke out a rat and fed the guy disinformation or there is something to it. If there is, then surely his internet ramblings couldn't really help an opposing team at this stage, they just wouldn't have enough time. They would afterall have had to have started with the same initial problem that the 24 had in the first place to really gain an understanding of how to manipulate such a phenomena. I think only McLaren really experienced that.

Another day. Another image.
http://twitpic.com/z6lz3

The SilverCalipers™

What a tease.

I don't know why but after seeing that i got an urge to check my bits and bobs were still there

The new clothing:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport...-into-gear.html

1:47min. The car in background seems have narrower front tyres.

f**k the car.... 1:03, call me!

Where did the video go? I can't see it on that page?

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport...-into-gear.html
below the text

Thanks watching now, was very slow to load.

I think it's a 23, judging from the rear wing anyway.

...of doom? ...of justice? Nah, that was the DDD. ...of righteous anger? ...of pointiness?

lol...yea, she is quite mint. Lewis probably already has the digits

I wont mind giving Italian Maria (1:54) some "high happiness" too ...take that Ferrari

...Of Boredom™

"Formula 1 technical chiefs have officially agreed to ban double diffusers from the start of next year, AUTOSPORT can reveal"

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/81024


So that's it folks - only one year left to bask in it's glorious rectitude.

...of Grand Obtusity

austrian gp 2000. epicness

ps, they will find another way to substitue for the diffusrs.