Ask Gary Anderson: Is there more to Alonso's crash?

Do you think McLaren has been completely honest about the cause of Fernando Alonso's crash?
Niles Damhill, via Twitter

Niles, I believe that, for some reason, McLaren is being a bit reluctant to put everything known about the incident into the public domain.

These cars are built to withstand the maximum corner and braking forces seen over a year's competition. Then on top of those loads there is a safety factor applied.

For a small team that doesn't perhaps have the confidence in its data, a factor of two would be used. For a larger team with more data and people to work through it, it could be down to a 1.5 safety factor.

With these maximum loads in mind, the suspension components are designed to fail and leave the survival cell and the suspension pick-ups intact.

If the suspension components don't fail, they could damage the survival cell, rendering a very expensive and time-consuming component to become scrap.

After the accident it looked like only one of the front wishbones had failed from a lateral impact, so there was no real damage. McLaren ran the car the next day, so there was no chassis damage.

There are plenty of unconfirmed reports about the details of the accident, but from what I've seen of the damage sustained, I would say the chassis did not suffer much more of a lateral impact than 12-16g. As a rule of thumb, the driver will experience about half of what the chassis sees, so 6-8g.

With all the mandatory headrest padding etc, the driver will experience that level of force many times during a race weekend without any problems.

Those are the facts as I see it. What really happened will come out in the end - it always does.

McLaren (2011) and Red Bull (2014) miraculously recovered from a disastrous pre-season. Do you think McLaren can do the same again?
@eggry, via Twitter

Motor racing is a very strange sport. You have a sportsman as the driver and then this hugely complicated piece of engineering equipment bolted around him.

Every part of it has to work in harmony, otherwise you are not as competitive as you should be.

On top of that, each driver has about 30 people backing him up at the racetrack and another group at the factory trying their hardest to find improvements in every area.

Add all this up and there is every opportunity to pull a rabbit out of the hat in time for Australia. But I wouldn't be rushing down to the betting shop just yet.

Most other sports, such as golf and tennis, come down to how much the individual competitor puts into it.

Yes, you still need the best equipment and people around you, but compared to motorsport this makes up such a small percentage of the end result.

The nose of the 2015 Mercedes seems to be slightly thinner than the 2014 car. Other aero parts seem to be less complex too. Is there any reason to believe that Mercedes will have less downforce and therefore more tyre degradation?
Marcelo Aguiar, via Facebook

Mercedes changed its nose in the early part of last season to a design that was as short as possible but still passed the crash test. This development produced a little more downforce.

To pass the nose crash test, you need a certain material content and volume. With the nose being so short, Mercedes would have had to add some width to get that material content and volume.

For 2015, the nose minimum length regulations are defined by the FIA. It is now quite a bit longer than in 2014, so it's allowed them to make the nose that little bit slimmer and still maintain the volume and material content.

All that said, I believe most teams have lost a small amount of overall downforce from this nose change.

More important is if that loss has reduced the consistency of the aerodynamics. To the driver, consistency is everything as they can then use the car right to the limit.

If the consistency is not there then a driver can normally put in a good laptime on new tyres, but it's also very easy to overwork the rear tyres as the grip level drops away on long runs.

Both Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton were complaining about the balance and I think they might just be suffering from this problem a little more than they were last year.

Why are some teams, like Mercedes, running with a box-section monkey seat compared to the kind Toro Rosso runs? What are the different benefits?
Ruan Labrum-Hill, via Facebook

The monkey seat relates to a small area in the regulations that allows the teams to fit a small rear downforce-producing device.

Teams ran them before the introduction of the central turbo exhaust outlet, but it's now a little more efficient having it surround the exhaust outlet.

The high-speed exhaust gas means the airflow in that area is travelling faster than the car, so it will give more downforce.

The squared version will generate more downforce and will probably generate a vortex where the endplate joins the horizontal wing section.

This vortex can be beneficial to how quickly the rear wing airflow attaches when the DRS closes.

The curved version, as Toro Rosso has, will produce less downforce but it'll be more efficient as an individual component.

The height is also important in influencing how it interacts with the diffuser.

On the Mercedes, I believe it is also lower. The central section of the diffuser is more aggressive - this will give a little more downforce, but can lead to inconsistency in its performance.

So perhaps Mercedes is using this monkey seat design to help the central part of the diffuser.

If you had to design a 2015 car, what design features would you take from rival teams?
@motorace_addict, via Twitter

Every element of an F1 car is critical to its overall performance, so it is about getting everything to work in harmony.

You will hear a lot of talk about vortices and vortex structure as if it didn't exist before, but I can assure you it's been around for a long time. It's now just the buzzword in F1 car design.

The level of understanding of this very complicated airflow structure has improved massively with the level of CFD (computational fluid dynamics) that the teams are now using.

So it is not about copying other teams; you need to use your own set of tools from your own toolbox and then you will have a baseline design to work and develop from.

You obviously look at other designs, but more importantly you want to keep an eye on their development direction and their performance related to that development.

If you set out to design a new car, the most important thing is to design something you understand and that you know how to put into its working window.

As time is so limited at a race meeting, you need to know how to fiddle with it when the driver requests a change in handling characteristics.

What do you expect the pole time to be in Australia and can Manor get within 107 per cent?
@oppolockf1B, via Twitter

It's always very difficult to make any real laptime performance assumptions from Barcelona winter testing.

The drivers have available to them every tyre compound Pirelli will use this season, plus additional ones, so a car that has an inherent balance problem will normally handle quite well on at least one of these compounds.

When Manor gets to Melbourne, it will have the two nominated compounds (soft and medium) and that's it, so it's down to getting a car balance to suit these tyres.

I would hope that, a year on from the major regulation change we saw for 2014, the teams, the engine suppliers and indeed Pirelli would have found a bit of laptime.

Last year the fastest lap was a 1m29.375s by Nico Rosberg in practice. It rained for qualifying, so I think we would have seen a low 1m28s in dry conditions.

If it is dry, I think we should expect to see a low 1m26s for pole.

Considering that Manor is using last year's car with last year's Ferrari engine, and that it was 3.8 seconds off the fastest lap in practice two and 4.8s off the fastest lap in practice overall in Melbourne last year, do all the sums on that and getting within 107 per cent is not going to be easy.

But as long as it puts in the laps in practice and looks as if it is on top of the car, then I'm sure the FIA will be fairly lenient.

Your F1 career seems to have happened in two halves, in the 1970s and early 1980s, then back with Jordan for the 1990s. Who was the best driver you worked with in your first F1 career?
Alan Ball, via email

Alan, you are correct, during the '80s my brother-in-law, Bob Simpson, and I set up Anson to make bits for F1 teams. We also built our own Formula Ford, Formula 3 and Super Vee cars and I did a bit of engineering on Indycars and, in the late '80s, Formula 3000.

'Best' is always a difficult thing to define, but I consider it to be a driver that I liked working with.

They might not have been the ultimate cut-throat racer, but they needed to be talented and committed to what they were doing.

In the early/mid '70s I worked for Bernie Ecclestone at Brabham and during that period Carlos Pace drove for him.

I was quite inexperienced, but he was a nice guy to work with and always put 100 per cent into whatever he did.

Unfortunately he lost his life in a plane accident otherwise he would have gone on to lots of success and I am sure would have been world champion.

I moved to McLaren in the later '70s and there Patrick Tambay was again a pleasure to work with.

On the way back from races, we used to go testing with James Hunt, and Teddy Mayer, the McLaren team principal, would run James's car.

But if we pleaded enough with Teddy, he would allow us to get Patrick's car out of the truck and Patrick and I would get on with our own little bit of testing.

He would come into the pits, we would have a chat about things, I might suggest we try a stiffer front spring and Patrick would jump out of the car and give me a hand to change the springs, get back in again and off he'd go.

How times have changed.

During the '80s and my years out of F1, Roberto Moreno, Tommy Byrne and Kris Nissen are all drivers I have fond memories of.

Assuming you believe Mercedes will win the championship, which team and driver do you expect to be the main challenger in 2015?
Sarah Case, via email

Sarah, I don't think it will be one team. I expect it to alternate between Red Bull, Ferrari and Williams, and depending on the circuit one of these three will be keeping Mercedes honest.

I'm expecting a lot from Ferrari. We know Sebastian Vettel is no slouch and Kimi Raikkonen, given the tools, can do the job.

These two have a lot to prove and I believe they are feeling positive within a rejuvenated Ferrari.