planetf1.com

IMO not every little bit is shared the drivers & their engineers try to keep some little secrets for themselfes, to have a little advantage over the other side of the greage.
Hamilton mentioned it, when he said he was surprised, to see ALL engineers ( his engineers, too) sit around the table, with all of his data, to the bits, all his tiny little secrets everything he worked out with his engineers.

IMO not every little bit is shared the drivers & their engineers try to keep some little secrets for themselfes, to have a little advantage over the other side of the greage.
Hamilton mentioned it, when he said he was surprised, to see ALL engineers ( his engineers, too) sit around the table, with all of his data, to the bits, all his tiny little secrets everything he worked out with his engineers.

Haha the tricky Pirellis "burnt" just faster when they were too cold. Both had the same effect, too cold & too hot tyres, both wore out too fast. Only the right temperature made them last

Thats an inaccurate characterization actually. There are temps at which a compound will work and temps where it won't, and thats regardless of wear. When you talk of "wear" there are different types - damage (blistering for example), and usage (you physically wear past the useful part of the tire's surface). Tires don't automatically wear away faster when they are hot. Don't confuse wear with temperature, they are their own independent issues.

Hamilton himself said he made an alteration to his driving in order to get better performance out of the tyres, he even added that perhaps other drivers were already doing this but didn't say what he was actually doing, why would he?

Then we see the all the race engineers and Button looking through his telemetry/data to see exactly what Hamilton was doing, i just question given all this why Button could not replicate this thats all.

Hamilton himself said he made an alteration to his driving in order to get better performance out of the tyres, he even added that perhaps other drivers were already doing this but didn't say what he was actually doing, why would he?

Then we see the all the race engineers and Button looking through his telemetry/data to see exactly what Hamilton was doing, i just question given all this why Button could not replicate this thats all.

FWIW...I think in many teams at the beginning of the season one side of the garage ventured into the unknown to try things to get a leg up on everyone, while the other side went with what they knew worked. In F1, especially with the crazy tire situation early on, you can't just be content to have a car that's inching ahead THIS weekend... you need to always be thinking and working long term. I think McLaren was using Jenson, most likely with his blessing, to try different things to be even better than what they already knew worked. I think Sebastian was doing the same thing. Sort of, "I'm not completely happy with what we have, even though its reasonably competitive, so we're going to go further outside of the box to find a greater advantage". The data collected in that process would be very useful to the designers compared to both sides using the same packages and ideas with just slightly varied setups. Unfortunately on-track incidents and operational failures muddy the data a bit, and make the whole process take longer. All a consequence of the limited testing...

This being true Button agreed because he'd already fallen out of WDC contention?

The wrong temperature causes heavier degeneration, regardless if the temperatures have been too high, or too low, the effect was the same.
Too cold tyres, got a surface like glass after few ( 1 or 2 are enough therefore) laps, once those surface is " frozen" the effect can't be made reverse. The car starts to slide around on those tyres, wich leads to extensive degeneration.
Same effect when the tyres overheat , and the surface got burned.
This was explained from Nico Rosberg, when he spoke about the problems Merc had with the tyres, and their high degeneration they suffered.
JB suffered the same problems , therfore they did not realise if the tyres had been too hot or too cold for quite some time because the effect was the same, but the right solution for either problem ( overheated, or underheated)were quite different.

Drivers take part at those post race debriefs so, I'm sure it was not the 1st Hamilton walked in, or took part, but obviously, he was surprised to see something there, wich he has called his little secrets
A race engineer & a driver have to trust each other, they usually have a very close relationship, and if Lewis " secrets" really were some kind of little private informations between him and his race engineers I can understand his surprise

They did not at McLaren. temperature measuring at the wheels is only at tests, at races the instruments to do it would hamper them. They messure the exhaust temeratutes, engine, breaks, but not the surfache of the wheels.

But the most difficult part for us was before the summer break when we just didn't have the pace

"We tried new things because I struggled to get tyre temperature more than most, and it didn't work, it just destroyed the tyres around Monaco and Canada time,"

How would it hamper them?

Even FI were telling their drivers over the radio about tyre temps. You saying FI have something on their car McLaren doesn't?


How would Hembrey know that Buttons temps had the widest split of all drivers between the axles if they have no way of measuring it?

First you say Hamilton was the FIRST time at such a debrief wich is BS
Now you write you are sure it was not his first, you should once decide what you write, and not just turn it around anytime .
This is not about technical secrets, or data, it's just about how a driver brakes, drives, takes corners etc, wich each driver does different. Little changes at the tyre pressure, etc. nothing top secret, but personal things each driver works out with his team.
Read the article Jock Clear wrote recently there he describes a little bit how the diff. driver teams try to get little advantages over the other side. There is nothing aboout holding back data, it's just normal competiotion, like it's everywhere in every team, where the tem mates race against each other.
do you think Buttons engineers gave Hamiltons side the data at spa about the new wing?
Do you think they share any little bit of info?

Your assumption about Hamilton abnd his fans is your view wich has neither something to do with him or his fans.

i know teams on about 1-5% of F1 team's budget who use these sensors at each wheel as they know how important it is, F1 in 2 tyre affected seasons don't use them? B.S. ( i am sure Ashley can back em up on this as she must have used them or saw teams use them)

Jenson's problem was not that he needed to drive like Lewis. and if that were the case then he and his engineer's wouldn't have looked at Lewis' data but would have looked at his Telemetry to "teach" Jenson how to drive. now i don't think anyone thinks that is the case. Data is how the car behaves and is set up telemtry is how the driver behaves and controls the car.

Here is my take on the story; Jenson was doing fine till around Bahrian (won Australia, 2nd China, Malasyia was ahead of Lewis till his error with Karthikeyan and even Bahrain was ahead till he got a puncture, exhaust and diff failure). anyhow, after that point Mclaren introduced a major upgrade after Mugello (including a higher nose as well as other aero fiddles) Jenson and his engineers struggled to adapt to that and get heat in the tyres, or maybe they thought they can get more of it, who knows.

They changed a few things with the aero, mechanical balance as well as suspension geometry which they thought would make them faster. It didn't. the effect was the tyres were overheated and lasted nearly half their expected time and thus Jenson had to go very slow or have extra pitstops.
Got to Monaco changed things a bit, things got a bit better but Jenson couldn't get out of Q2, made a bad start and this being Monaco and his car not being handicapped he couldn't pass Kovalinen even though he was faster and strategy didn't help either.
Canada was the absolute shocker, Jenson's car had a problem and he couldn't even drive it properly, in practice he did many out and in laps to test the car is working but clearly something was wrong with his gearbox IRC. the team decided that since he already had problems with the suspension they would use the opportunity to test out a new rear suspension which they thought would make things better. the car's rear end got a makeover by P3 and Jenson was out, did a few edits to setup with the limited time available and he and the team went nearly blind to Qualy and the race which was disastrous for the 2011 winner. even getting lapped by Lewis, and whatever your opinion is i doubt people really think that Lewis can lap Jenson that easily and the gap between their race pace in clear air has never been more than a couple of tenths either way.

By Valencia the team decided to go back to a base which they knew worker, and that would be their last major Upgrade after Mugello and since Jenson was struggling at that point they had to go with Lewis' setup given Jenson' and Lewis' setups are normally within 5% from each other (the team stated several times they set the car up a bit similar). they tuned to that base and Jenson got to test it out through practice, unfortunately though at this point Mclaren were the slowest of the front bunch, even Lewis who had gotten used to that upgrade swiftly struggled in Valencia and Britian as did Jenson but he was up to speed then.

I don't believe it was Jenson's driving that caused him troubles, he has been teammates with Lewis for 3 years and never has he been so slow in comparison, his car had something wrong done on it setup wise, and i also believe (from experience) that setup is done by the engineers and not the driver. The driver tells how he would like the car to react and the engineers find the ways and that is why i agree that Jenson was not undone by his driving this year but more with how the team designed, modified and setup the car. the car was designed at its limits and optimally interconnected such that slight changes affected many parameters, this produced a sensitive, unreliable but very fast car when set up perfectly, such a car damaged their drivers chances; where one driver had the car always break down (unreliable) and the other lacked pace at 3-4 races in a very close season (sensitive), add that to some minor errors (ARB not fixed properly, throttle pedal stuck, underfuelling) and some operational errors (pitstops and strategy)

The truth is Jenson admits he and his side of the garage were totally lost with set up and had to use Lewis's set up and data to get him back on track .

This was stated by Jenson himself, Mclaren, Lewis , Whitmarsh on Sky, BBC post races pre races , numerous trade online articles , newspaper interviews etc . So quite why we have pages and pages on this thread denying that now is beyond me .

My question is do any of you seriously believe that Mclaren lacked pace in 2012 , I can't even say that had Lewis not shown us what Mclaren was capable of we would be none the wiser, because Jenson had some good races last season where he managed to show the true pace of the car .

I can only assume he is now embarrassed about those races , a driver of his calibre shouldn't go awol for that long , they all have the bad or inexplicably odd race but not like that and with the pressure now on him next year he's over thinking the situation .
He does need to be careful though because if as he says he's working hard to pull Mclaren around him attacking the one thing they had right to make himself look better is not the way to go about it .

No because I don't like swearing 👀

But I do believe that may to July Jenson was nothing to do with the outright pace of Mclaren as evidenced by the other Mclaren

The reason why we were not fighting for the title isn't just the reliability issues, the pace in that period of time wasn't good enough compared to our competitors."

Everyone looks at everyone else's data within a team, all the time. Its standard. That's how they figure out what to do with the cars short and long term. Why do you think they have a million engineers collecting and analyzing the stuff? Its a TEAM effort. I don't understand where this "one had to use the other's info to figure out what to do" thing comes from - they all look at each other's info constantly, and everyone learns something from it one way or the other. Standard operating procedure.



Now, only talk DOWN the table fellas, not ACROSS it, lest the dark side learn our data.

Yes JB lacked pace not Mclaren there is no way Mclaren dropped to lower midfield and back marker pace he simply struggled and with hindsight should have sided with Lewis and gone to the in season testing to better understand the tyres I believe if he had done so he may not have struggled so badly