mclaren slowness: engine or aero

[clk-lm]

is mclaren lagging from a lack power or is their car not as aerodynamically advanced as they would like.

[KC]

From what I have read, they are suffering with a lack of traction exitting corners and instability under braking. these make for slow cornering speeds.

[Minardi fan]

At Silverstone today the Mercedes engine was having real problems coming out of Luffield corner - it sounded terrible. They were also having difficulty braking in the damp conditions.

[Jeanburrasca81]

I hered the aerodynamics ain't that great this season.

[Maximum F1]

It's the aerodynamics...they are suffering from understeer. The problem was that they couldn't get back to their wind tunnel to sort it out. This is why they said that things should be better when they get back to Europe. This is part of the reason why I think Williams will be put back down the field in Imola...McLaren and Ferrari will be back at the top.
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Maximum F1
http://www.maximumf1.com

[JoMiSaP]

During the retransmision of the Bazilian GP in the Spanish TV they said that the wind tunnel in which McLaren had tested their chassis had some faults and that was the reason for the poor aerodynamics of the cars.

They also said that McLaren had sorted out the faults and were expecting to start improving soon.

[AlteredGrizz]

The problem with Mclaren is the drivers, Ok Coultard had a good race in Brazil , but his wins are far between, how long before his next one? I like David but he's not championship material, sorry.
As for Mika well ever since he had his son Hugo he hasn't been the same. A retirement will be announced soon I'm sure.

So a driver change for Mclaren would be a good thing.Hire young blood or a French Canadian...

[Damon]

Totally agree AlteredGrizz, the car won Hakkinens three titles, even Mazzacane could have one in the Mclaren of the last 3 years No thats silly! This years Mclaren is probably Adrian Newey's first poor car, even geniouses, it seems, have off days...

[Raoul Duke]

Hakkinen has hit slump, a very big slump. But that doesn't mean that he won't come back and challenge for race wins. But I think he is out of contention for the championship, as he only has 1 point to TGF's 26. So TGF would have to have a lot of DNF's for Hakkinen to catch up(but that's exactly what happened last year, so you never know). Right now the only person who really seems a threat to TGF's WC chances is DC. But, sadly, DC is not consistent enough to keep the momentum he appears to have now. As for Williams, well they definitely have the speed to challenge Ferrari, but to much bad luck during the races has put them a long way behind in points. But it's still early days, so everything is far from over.

[mjstallard]

Front end downforce is where the problem is/was - at Melbourne and Adelaide, the front end of the car didn't seem too radically different to last years car, unlike every other team. (The big changes are due to the new technical regulations governing the dimensions of the front wing).

At Brazil, however, where their performance picked up, they were sporting a very different front end - a dihedral wing, similiar in styling to Ferrari's...the performance of the car seemed to be quite good

I expect to see some more improvement on the aero side from now on in - I presume they'll start using the new wind tunnel at Paragon alongside the current one. mmm, a megawatt of powerdrain to power a big fan)

I wonder if they'll let me use it when I start my Aero Eng. degree this September :P