Can McLaren's tech team beat Newey?

Are Tim Goss, Neil Oatley and Peter Prodromou at McLaren a strong enough design team to trouble the Adrian Newey-led Red Bull design team?
@aburo7888, via Twitter

I have always been very keen on having one captain steering the ship, that way I believe that you can react faster than working as a committee.

The captain needs to have the vision of where he or she is trying to get to, then bring in their department heads and together they thrash out how this can be achieved.

When you have a structure like this and the company is totally behind it then it makes decisions and direction so much easier. I believe this is how Red Bull works with Adrian. He still needs very clever people under him, but they know who makes the decisions.

McLaren seems to work with a very flat management style so I don't think Tim, Neil, or Peter can really put their stamp on the initial concept, which after all is the most important part to any successful car - or, in fact, anything.

Start with a pig's ear and you normally finish the season with a pig's ear as it just doesn't respond to anything. Start with a silk purse and it will respond to developments.

That said, I think the Mercedes structure is probably in between how McLaren and Red Bull work and that looks like a reasonable compromise.

But I do believe that when push would come to shove Paddy Lowe would be the man on the technical side that would call the shots at Mercedes.

In the 1980s and into the mid-1990s, the F1 monocoque was a rounded affair. Nowadays, they have a flat top with fairly sharp edges. What caused this change?
Matt Buck, via email

Matt, in the regulations there are two main chassis cross sections known as A-A, roughly at the front of the front wheel rim, and B-B, which is about the driver's knees. They also have to be a certain distance apart but the minimum height and width are defined.

These sections are basically a rectangle with a radius on each to the corners. As you want the minimum blockage in the area between the front wheels, the initial chassis layout will simply use these minimum cross section dimensions.

If you look at the driver's eye view of the top of the Mercedes chassis it has a small curve on the upper surface whereas the Red Bull is just flat topped. This just shows that aesthetics - which I consider that small curve to represent - doesn't do to much harm.

Can you see Ron Dennis returning to F1 in a different role?
Brian Stronach, via Twitter

Brian, sorry but this is a really short answer, there is not much to say other than I don't think so.

He has been around F1 a long time and during that time he hasn't been the easiest person for anyone like the FIA or Bernie Ecclestone to work with.

Teams have tested parts for next year in free practice. But with such significant rule changes, how can they evaluate them at all?
@eggry, via Twitter

With great difficulty! Most teams will have a model of next year's car being run in the windtunnel or in CFD and as they are getting direction from the initial 2017 research tests they are probably trying to track-correlate that as best possible.

When the season ends that's it for track running until next year, when everyone will have to be totally committed to what they are taking to the first four races at least.

Engine cooling requires radiators, which can be bulky and affect aerodynamics of the car. However you do not seem to have voiced any opinion on the cooling medium - water - and what modifications are used to enhance its thermal efficiency, viscosity and power required to drive the water pump?
James Holden, via email

All the teams push the limits on packaging the cooling system as efficiently as possible. The best way of explaining this is that airflow used for cooling won't be any good for making downforce.

They will all run an additive in the water, which helps very slightly with its heat dissipation into the radiator core. It also helps to lubricate the water pump seals and changes to a colour, normally blue or white when it mixes with air so highlights a leak.

Water does sound like a very simple fluid to be using, but it is fairly efficient. After all, every house in the world that has liquid central heating uses this medium.

Really interesting piece on the temperatures last time. Wouldn't it make sense for the FIA to add some stipulations to make the engines more road-car relevant by having a rule saying that they have to be started up with fluids at ambient temperature/20C. I always think it shows F1 excess off in the wrong way that it takes so many people just to start the thing up.
Phil Retsas, via email

You bring up a very good point and one that just shows that the regulations could do with a complete rewrite. I am sure there are many items just like your proposal that could pull F1 back from a spending spree that is doing no good for anyone.

The point in question was a reaction to a situation that had crept up over a few years and when it was discovered that it had got to a level that could cause injury to mechanics, or - even more importantly marshals attending a crash - the FIA rightly stepped in and did something about it.

I believe their reaction was correct at the time but could have had a review by now to bring it back in line with practicality.

Given there's a problem with braking/tyre temperatures staying high under safety cars, particularly in the wet, would it make sense to have a higher-performance safety car? Say an F1 car itself?
Steve Mitchell, via email

Given that the reason that the safety car is out there at all is that the conditions are dangerous, wouldn't a higher performance safety car just fall into this category?

After all, behind that car is supposed to be the best 22 drivers in the world. I think we could reduce that to about 10, but I don't see the safety car driver as being one of them.

As I said last week it would be much better for the lead F1 car to become the safety car. That way you would be allowing the guys that do this every week take control of the situation instead of driving around moaning about it.

I think you were at McLaren when Patrick Tambay was there. He's not a driver you hear much about - how good was he as a driver and what was he like to work with?
Ben Davis, via email

I was indeed and he was one of the nicest guys I have ever worked with. Unfortunately, he is suffering with Parkinson's so not around as much as he should be.

I was chief mechanic at McLaren during his time and sometimes on the way back from a race we would stop off to test somewhere.

Teddy Mayer and James Hunt would do the bulk of testing with James's mechanics, but on the odd occasion Teddy would allow me to get Patrick's car out of the truck and I would run it on my own with Patrick.

He would go for a run, come into the pits, we would have a chat, decide to try something like a stiffer front spring, he would jump out of the car, give me a hand to change the springs, jump back in and give it a whirl.

How the times have changed - and I'm not sure if it is for the better or worse.

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