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Formula 1
COOPER: Will The McLaren MP4-27 Be The Car To Beat?
The race for the 2012 title starts here. And it’s not just on the track...
The new McLaren MP4-27 car, pictured here at its Wednesday unveiling, has little in common with its predecessor. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Apart from some computer generated images of the Caterham, the launch of the McLaren MP4-27 was our first proper chance to see what a 2012 car looked like in the flesh.
The ugly front end of the Caterham – a result of the rule restricting the height of the nose – had us all worried about what the grid might look like this year, and it’s no secret that several other new cars will have a similar odd appearance. The good news at McLaren was that the car had a traditional smooth nose, with no ugly bumps or steps to spoil its lines. And in the traditional silver and red livery, overall the car looked very smart indeed.
How fast it is will be revealed when it tests alongside most of its main rivals at Jerez next week, but it surely can’t be any worse than last year’s car, which was an abject failure until a hasty redesign before the first race. And listening to the key players today it was clear that the team is confident that it has left no stone unturned in the search for performance as it seeks to topple Red Bull.
The man with the weight on his shoulders at the moment is McLaren’s director of engineering Tim Goss, who led the new car project. He admits that this is a stressful time of year.
“Yes, it always is,” says Goss. “I mean you work very hard over the winter period, in fact, well, since about this time last year, so it has been over the course of a whole year we've worked extremely hard on it and, of course, you're a bit nervous and anxious to find out exactly where you’re positioned in terms of performance with your opposite numbers.
“We've set ourselves very, very tough and ambitious targets, and we fully intend to reach those by the first race and deliver a championship-winning car. It is a complete rework from nose-to-tail. I think there's very little that we've carried over, you know. There's a few pieces of the fuel system but otherwise I think just about everything on the car has changed.
“We've worked extremely hard at producing a very integrated, aerodynamic and design package. There are a few features that we were pushing very hard from early on in the project and we've just stuck to the things that we think really, really matter, where we're going to extract most performance from the car, and I'm just really proud of the whole team and their efforts so far this year.
“From now we go into the next phase of the project, which is just really wringing the performance out of it, and we have a really good track record at that, at developing the car over the season, and already we've got big plans, and we've got – we've got upgrades for front wing, rear wing, floor and body work already planned, and I'm sure there will be a lot more coming through before the last race.”
The sight of the ‘normal’ nose came as relief to observers when the drivers pulled the sheet off the car, and even Jenson Button joked that we are likely to see some rather less pretty front ends. McLaren was simply able to make a standard, smooth nose profile work within the new height restriction, with no ‘eyes’ housing the suspension linkage.
“There was a regulation change around the front end this year to limit the height of the nose and the forward part of the chassis,” says technical director Paddy Lowe. “We've produced an arrangement which meets that regulation, at the same time it follows some of the philosophy that we've carried over from last year, hence the line is similar in appearance, and we haven't pursued the route that Red Bull took [last year].
“It's a matter of your philosophy and the different trades you make. You can't see performance necessarily by eye, it's a matter of fine-tuning the balance between all the relevant aspects. If you look at the front end you're talking about trading aerodynamics, trading the height of the weight, the arrangement of the suspension and its effect on aerodynamics and stiffness.
“So all of these things have to be combined to produce the best result according to your own philosophy and your own measurements and that will come out differently for different teams.”
The big talking point as we see the new cars unveiled in the coming days will be the impact of the exhaust rules. Exhausts now have to be aimed away from the floor so that in theory at least, they no longer have an aerodynamic affect.
“Clearly the last 18 months, the performance profit area was all around exhausts and blowing diffusers,” says Lowe. “We now have new constraints in terms of the geometry, so that is where we can put the exhaust pipe and what angle it can be directed at, all of that intended to keep it high and away from the diffuser.
“And there have been some restrictions on what we can do with the engine, so some of the more extreme things that were being done to engine tuning in order to maximize the blowing effect have been severely restricted.
“The fact of the matter, though, is that exhausts exist on a car, you have to have them, they blow gas. That will always generate some performance, a finite level of performance. Even just simply blowing exhaust out of the back of the car produces thrust that makes the car quicker. So there still is a very narrow extent to which you can use exhaust gas to generate performance aerodynamically much, much reduced from last year. But inevitably we've been trying to look at the ways to make the most of that in the face of the new constraint.”
As to how much McLaren had lost out under the new ruling, Goss says: “I think in short we could just say that, you know, it's drastically reduced. I mean, there are geometric constraints and you're just not going to achieve the same effect that you achieved last year. It's as simple as that. It's reduced a long way. You have to think about treating the rear end of the car differently and concentrating on what we'd call unblown performance as opposed to blown performance.”
Lowe makes the point that at last year’s British GP – where blowing was restricted for one race only – McLaren suffered more than most. In other words it had gained more than its rivals from blowing and had more to lose.
“In effect, the performance we saw if you remember at Silverstone last year, there was a brief period at which the engine-tuning was restricted significantly, and we saw a slightly different ranking between the teams in terms of performance.
“We were hit particularly hard at that point, which for me was a measure that we'd done a good job in the area in fact, we'd put our effort into the area that was generating most performance. But that was an interesting sign of, as Tim says, you know, what was the unblown performance of a car, and we've taken lessons from that and built on that”.
One very obvious difference from last year’s car is that the U-shaped sidepods have gone. Goss explains that the design had simply become redundant: “Last year's U-shaped side-pod worked very well with what we were trying to achieve last year with the exhaust layout, it was all intended at creating more down wash to the rear end, and it performed particularly well last year.
“This year at a fairly early stage we set about a different approach to both the external and the internal aerodynamics of the car, and then once the exhaust regulations started to become a little bit clearer, then it was quite obvious to us that the U-shaped side-pod no longer fitted in with both the internal aerodynamics and some of the external aerodynamics that we pursued early on. So it works, it worked very well last year, but it's actually just not suited to what we're trying to achieve this year.”
We shall see the Ferrari and Force India on Friday, and more cars will emerge on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, either on the web or in the pitlane at Jerez. But we won’t see the new Mercedes until the second test at the end of the month, because the team has chosen to spend more time in R&D and come out late. It’s an intriguing choice, but one McLaren does not agree with.
“I think Mercedes GP are clearly an exception in not taking their new car to the first test,” says Goss. “I think the accepted approach is to get out there as early as you can. We've worked very hard at putting together a launch package that is competitive, but then we know that there's lots of parts of the car that we want to develop, and we give ourselves the opportunity to do that.
“So the first test will be more about putting mileage on the car, getting to know the systems, getting familiar with setting up the car with different aerodynamic characteristics, but then by the time we get to the third test then we said there will be a significant upgrade package, and we give ourselves the time to get that learning in and then get the upgrade package in. Certainly we've tried different approaches in the past. This time round I think it's just the correct thing to do.”
The race for the 2012 title starts here. And it’s not just on the track...
Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
The ugly front end of the Caterham – a result of the rule restricting the height of the nose – had us all worried about what the grid might look like this year, and it’s no secret that several other new cars will have a similar odd appearance. The good news at McLaren was that the car had a traditional smooth nose, with no ugly bumps or steps to spoil its lines. And in the traditional silver and red livery, overall the car looked very smart indeed.
How fast it is will be revealed when it tests alongside most of its main rivals at Jerez next week, but it surely can’t be any worse than last year’s car, which was an abject failure until a hasty redesign before the first race. And listening to the key players today it was clear that the team is confident that it has left no stone unturned in the search for performance as it seeks to topple Red Bull.
The man with the weight on his shoulders at the moment is McLaren’s director of engineering Tim Goss, who led the new car project. He admits that this is a stressful time of year.
“Yes, it always is,” says Goss. “I mean you work very hard over the winter period, in fact, well, since about this time last year, so it has been over the course of a whole year we've worked extremely hard on it and, of course, you're a bit nervous and anxious to find out exactly where you’re positioned in terms of performance with your opposite numbers.
“We've set ourselves very, very tough and ambitious targets, and we fully intend to reach those by the first race and deliver a championship-winning car. It is a complete rework from nose-to-tail. I think there's very little that we've carried over, you know. There's a few pieces of the fuel system but otherwise I think just about everything on the car has changed.
“We've worked extremely hard at producing a very integrated, aerodynamic and design package. There are a few features that we were pushing very hard from early on in the project and we've just stuck to the things that we think really, really matter, where we're going to extract most performance from the car, and I'm just really proud of the whole team and their efforts so far this year.
“From now we go into the next phase of the project, which is just really wringing the performance out of it, and we have a really good track record at that, at developing the car over the season, and already we've got big plans, and we've got – we've got upgrades for front wing, rear wing, floor and body work already planned, and I'm sure there will be a lot more coming through before the last race.”
The sight of the ‘normal’ nose came as relief to observers when the drivers pulled the sheet off the car, and even Jenson Button joked that we are likely to see some rather less pretty front ends. McLaren was simply able to make a standard, smooth nose profile work within the new height restriction, with no ‘eyes’ housing the suspension linkage.
“There was a regulation change around the front end this year to limit the height of the nose and the forward part of the chassis,” says technical director Paddy Lowe. “We've produced an arrangement which meets that regulation, at the same time it follows some of the philosophy that we've carried over from last year, hence the line is similar in appearance, and we haven't pursued the route that Red Bull took [last year].
“It's a matter of your philosophy and the different trades you make. You can't see performance necessarily by eye, it's a matter of fine-tuning the balance between all the relevant aspects. If you look at the front end you're talking about trading aerodynamics, trading the height of the weight, the arrangement of the suspension and its effect on aerodynamics and stiffness.
“So all of these things have to be combined to produce the best result according to your own philosophy and your own measurements and that will come out differently for different teams.”
The big talking point as we see the new cars unveiled in the coming days will be the impact of the exhaust rules. Exhausts now have to be aimed away from the floor so that in theory at least, they no longer have an aerodynamic affect.
“Clearly the last 18 months, the performance profit area was all around exhausts and blowing diffusers,” says Lowe. “We now have new constraints in terms of the geometry, so that is where we can put the exhaust pipe and what angle it can be directed at, all of that intended to keep it high and away from the diffuser.
“And there have been some restrictions on what we can do with the engine, so some of the more extreme things that were being done to engine tuning in order to maximize the blowing effect have been severely restricted.
“The fact of the matter, though, is that exhausts exist on a car, you have to have them, they blow gas. That will always generate some performance, a finite level of performance. Even just simply blowing exhaust out of the back of the car produces thrust that makes the car quicker. So there still is a very narrow extent to which you can use exhaust gas to generate performance aerodynamically much, much reduced from last year. But inevitably we've been trying to look at the ways to make the most of that in the face of the new constraint.”
As to how much McLaren had lost out under the new ruling, Goss says: “I think in short we could just say that, you know, it's drastically reduced. I mean, there are geometric constraints and you're just not going to achieve the same effect that you achieved last year. It's as simple as that. It's reduced a long way. You have to think about treating the rear end of the car differently and concentrating on what we'd call unblown performance as opposed to blown performance.”
Lowe makes the point that at last year’s British GP – where blowing was restricted for one race only – McLaren suffered more than most. In other words it had gained more than its rivals from blowing and had more to lose.
“In effect, the performance we saw if you remember at Silverstone last year, there was a brief period at which the engine-tuning was restricted significantly, and we saw a slightly different ranking between the teams in terms of performance.
“We were hit particularly hard at that point, which for me was a measure that we'd done a good job in the area in fact, we'd put our effort into the area that was generating most performance. But that was an interesting sign of, as Tim says, you know, what was the unblown performance of a car, and we've taken lessons from that and built on that”.
One very obvious difference from last year’s car is that the U-shaped sidepods have gone. Goss explains that the design had simply become redundant: “Last year's U-shaped side-pod worked very well with what we were trying to achieve last year with the exhaust layout, it was all intended at creating more down wash to the rear end, and it performed particularly well last year.
“This year at a fairly early stage we set about a different approach to both the external and the internal aerodynamics of the car, and then once the exhaust regulations started to become a little bit clearer, then it was quite obvious to us that the U-shaped side-pod no longer fitted in with both the internal aerodynamics and some of the external aerodynamics that we pursued early on. So it works, it worked very well last year, but it's actually just not suited to what we're trying to achieve this year.”
We shall see the Ferrari and Force India on Friday, and more cars will emerge on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, either on the web or in the pitlane at Jerez. But we won’t see the new Mercedes until the second test at the end of the month, because the team has chosen to spend more time in R&D and come out late. It’s an intriguing choice, but one McLaren does not agree with.
“I think Mercedes GP are clearly an exception in not taking their new car to the first test,” says Goss. “I think the accepted approach is to get out there as early as you can. We've worked very hard at putting together a launch package that is competitive, but then we know that there's lots of parts of the car that we want to develop, and we give ourselves the opportunity to do that.
“So the first test will be more about putting mileage on the car, getting to know the systems, getting familiar with setting up the car with different aerodynamic characteristics, but then by the time we get to the third test then we said there will be a significant upgrade package, and we give ourselves the time to get that learning in and then get the upgrade package in. Certainly we've tried different approaches in the past. This time round I think it's just the correct thing to do.”
The race for the 2012 title starts here. And it’s not just on the track...
Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
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