planetf1.com

Let's see what Gary Anderson has to say:

"McLaren finished last year with the fastest car and the new MP4-28 looks like a good improvement on that.

"The steps forward start at the front with a higher nose and chassis, pretty close to the maximum allowed height, which gives more room for better airflow under the car than last year.

"They have followed Ferrari's 2012 lead in using pull-rod front suspension, which has a lower centre of gravity and the pull-rod manages the airflow off the front wing better than the more common push-rod.

"The sidepods have been moved backwards, giving better airflow, and the back has been focused on maximising that flow.

"The driveshaft and lower wishbone have been packaged in one element and the rear bodywork is heavily scooped out to make the most of the downforce-producing 'coke-bottle' area between the rear wheels.

"The idea is to separate that airflow from the exhaust gases, which McLaren have continued to treat in the way they did last year, rather than using Red Bull-style tunnels.

"McLaren are one of the few teams to have small-diameter exhaust exits, which gives faster airflow and therefore more downforce when they hit the aerodynamically shaped rear brake ducts.

"Overall, McLaren look to have made a good step forward."

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Never been a real fan of this livery, its mainly chrome. I was at least hoping something a little different but it's pretty much identical to the livery they've had for the last 7 years.

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Danger is real, fear is a choice.
PF1 Pick 10 Competition
Best Round Result: 1st (Monaco 2012)
Podiums: 4
2013 Championship Standing: 74th

Jenson Button talks so much crap

"I have finally had input into this years car i'm not just stepping into a car a driving it"

Clown

May be an optical illusion (or the whiskey) but to me the nose looks either 'thin' or 'long'. anyone else get this impression?

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I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

Marx (Groucho)

It's taken him 3 years to have input into the car? Wow, no doubt some on this forum will have an excuse for that statement

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#10

Nothing like jumping the gun. Lets wait and see how the car does at testing first!

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#10

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Does anybody think the change of suspension layout might cause Jenson new tyre woes?

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http://www.racefan.co.uk

Pretty sure the switch to pullrod is aimed almost directly at eliminating JB's tire woes, but we'll have to wait and see if it works. Its hard for the teams to work on solving last year's tire problems when the tires themselves have also changed for this year.

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One thing that occurred to me as I was looking back over the pics of the MP4-28... is for all the discussion about financial backing playing into Perez getting the seat (I'm not naive enough to think that was totally ignored, though I don't believe it's nearly the big factor its been made out to be at times)... I don't notice any sponsors on the car that would appear to be brought on board by Perez.

Of course, that doesn't mean they won't appear on future liveries, but for now, I think its worth noting, especially given the focus on that part of the decision making for the seat.

I would.

Perez still feels a bit out of place to me
I guess that's normal but maybe also a little because he had a bad end to last year

I'm looking forward to the first tests, I'm very hopeful that Mclaren will start out with the best car this year

I really liked this livery for a few years but it is getting a bit boring now I agree. I also had hoped for something new this year, but maybe their hands are tied somewhat by the sponsors.

Agreed. I wonder if Ferrari are going to be boring again and paint their cars red!

i recall times when ferrari chose a dark-metallic red instead of the strawberry-color they have nowadays ... they could also do a tribute-color and go for dark-grey, as TVs early on didn't show any colors

Marca publishes a lot of bull, but their best stuff is always their flash animations/stats, etc.

Here's a good one to compare the MP4-27 and the MP4-28;

http://www.marca.com/2013/01/31/multime ... 43880.html

Tyre woes are going to happen with both Pushrods and Pullrods, both systems are highly tuneable and both will produce similar effects, suspension wise.

I would guess such a decision would be made based on packaging and general dynamics. tyres will need to be optimized in both designs.

damn... those sidepods are actually kind of skinny... short and tight... they must have a done a lot of optimizing under the skin to pack all that stuff in there... makes one (me at least) worry about reliability...

Wasn't Gary saying the exact opposite last year when Ferrari unveiled theirs? Saying the pull the rod would cause problems with Aero?

Edit.

No he didn't.

Did say this though



Full article www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/17350638

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Disclaimer: The above post maybe tongue in cheek.

"I thought I'd get your theories, mock them, then embrace my own. The usual."

But the upper has EVERYTHING to do with the lower...

The regulations stipulate that the front wing has to have a certain cross section. Which means that as a by-product of getting the lower of it as high as possible, the upper section is forced to fit into certain regulations.

As for why teams would choose to do it and have an ugly ass front section, it's because the benefits from underneath vastly outweigh the tiny aero issues of a big step on top.

And again, teams will no doubt choose not to apply a vanity panel for racing, because the extra weight will be hamper more than the tiny aero issue of the step.

Mclaren tried to run an aesthetically pleasing front end - but realised you do lose some of the potency by not having the raised front end.


Can you explain HOW you think that having a lower front end with lower volume of space under it can create as much downforce as having as big a space as possible contributing to airflow to the rear of the car?

I disagree with this statement, last year mclaren did not "try to run an aesthetically pleasing front end", they kept to the same design philosophy which they had used for a number of years, they did however over the course of last season find that they have pursued all avenues of development for that particular design philosophy hence they need to do something different this year so they can unlock new avenues for further development.

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'There are know followers, there are unknown followers and there are unknown unknown followers' Donald Rumsfeld 2012

Could go either way. Either he'd be complaining on the radio non-stop or the suspension could totally suit his style and he'd fly.

you'd hav thought theyd told one of their drivers to get a hair cut

No, I think the switch to pull-rod is because following the switch to a higher nose, that raises the centre of gravity. Pull-rod suspension allows you to have a lower centre of gravity than push-rod - so you get back a little of what you have lost in terms of mechanical grip.

Obviously, there are other issues factors involved that need working around, but I reckon Mclaren can sort them out...

Well the darker metallic reds were a stray from their traditional Ferrari Red which is an actual official color anyone can buy to paint their car like my brother did in '92. For a while they tried something different and then decided to go back to their official color. this Chrome paint is something special for me. It's so hard to imagine that paint can turn out so amazingly similar to actual chrome.

What I can't understand is how so many people complain about liveries being messy due to cluttering the cars all up with sponsors all over the place and yet, here we have the cleanest of all the liveries which shows all the beautiful flowing lines and now it's boring. I'm sorry but I'm a car guy through and through and for me, seeing all the flowing lines of a car like this is fantastic. I will say their West liveries were some of my favorites in history. McLaren just have excellent design prowess.

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Second place is the first loser!

All but Ferrari managed okay with the high noses and push rod last year, so for some teams the CoG issue isn't important enough to force the switch. The Ferrari was overall pretty kind to its tires last year, and at the very least pretty consistent with them. Could see McLaren looking at pullrod to try to achieve the same thing, although the decision would have likely been made mid-season-ish.

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Yes it is getting boring.. Imagine just changing the chrome to white and keeping the red Vodafone bits.. I seem to remember that there were some Photoshop of that that looked amazing.

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Yea, but I think Mclaren are always a team keen on having a high amount of mechanical grip... Something with the low CoG helps. Therefore moving the nose up, they need to lower the CoG to retain that characteristic...

Those two things are not intrinsically linked.

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The McLaren looks exactly like last year's car, and that's a good thing. When did a team with a substantially different looking car to the year before win? It's always the ones who look more samey.

All of them look mostly the same as last year because the rules dictate that...unless you look at the details, where none of them are very similar to last year. And its the details that make the difference.

Also, off hand, the FW14.

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Brawn.

EDIT: Although everyone's car was different that year to the year before, to be fair!

The McLaren is the biggest deviation from its last car...the least "evolved" of the launched cars so far. Saying it looks the same is kinda funny actually.

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I don';t know about that, Ferrari's F138 is an evolution of last years car but so many systems have been completely changed or modified so heavily the car is essentially almost a completely new car as well. Tough call between them thus far.

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Second place is the first loser!

The Ferrari looks most like last year's car by far, especially the Brazil 2012 spec. If you took the modesty panel off you'd think they only brought small updates.

Generally it is evolution and not revolution that gets you results in times of stable regs. Look at Ferrari from 99-04, Williams from 92-94, McLaren in 98-00, Red Bull 09-12, McLaren 88-91. Everyone had to get radical in 09 so Brawn don't count and their evolution of that 09 car was rubbish because they were out developed. But they did consistently make rubbish evolutions from 10-12. So evolution is pretty consistent, revolution changes everything either for the better or the worse. That's why everyone will evolve and not revolve this year perhaps with the exception of Mercedes because they have to do something radical to get back to the front but they also risk getting it horribly horribly wrong.

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1994 1995 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

The Ferrari does seem to be a continuing of last years, but the MP4-28...well, I don't know, pull-rod, stepped nose (changed chassis), severely modified side-pods, and rear suspension, that looks kind of radical to me.

I just hope they got all the bugs out in time and won't have the same issues Ferrari had last at the start of last year...because honestly, Macca's officials statements with 'we decided to change the car to have better development opportunities, and not reach the development ceiling" kind of sounds similar to what Ferrari were mumbling last year. If I remember correctly, they were saying something like "the car is fundamentally good, it allows good development, but we need to understand it"...or something like that. And they were running aero paint tests in FP1 in Australia. Sure, they were right in the end, the car DID live up, more or less, to expectations, but I pray to God Mclaren gets their act on the road sooner...

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Olivier Panis fan.
...and also Jenson Button fan.

Actually 3 manufacturers (McLaren, Ferrari and Force India ) have made significant changes to their monocoque. The only one which is close to last year is Lotus.
Ferrari and FI might look same, but only thing that have retained similarity are sidepods for Ferrari.
Rear end of Ferrari is complete deviation from last year. Stretched, compacted, cleaner with steps taken to reduce the messy airflow at the back, and redesign of rear suspension. Add to that completely new KERS package which is now single package box under fuel tank which has all KERS related parts packed in as 1 package. Cooling ducts from front are gone, front chassis design is tweaked. F138 is even more of a air gobbler at front than last year which hopefully gives them lot of scope to develop it over the season.

Force India again has undergone fundamental change in Aerodynamic characteristics of the car. And they have completely new monocoque as well with lot of changes.
McLaren though having kept rear end similar to last year have completely went in different direction at the front.

All these 3 cars are more than minor evolution of last year. Probably FI is basically the one who have undergone mild evolution, but they have added completely new concepts which some teams used last year, but they didnt.

If you love Scarbs analysis, do check out these videos of him with Peter Windsor : http://www.youtube.com/user/peterwindsor/videos?view=0

They are something every one who is interested in F1 technology must watch.

Cars with same or similar liveries and sticking to similar rules will always look similar on first glance from one year to another. And that is what fools the naked eye.

Monocock (snigger)

Sorry, very immature of me.

Lol, this is what happens when typing from Android device(or even chrome aparantly). For them monocoque is a typo and autocorrects it to monocock which is not a typo for built in dictionary