McLaren's podium quest needs divine intervention

Do you think McLaren can possibly challenge for podiums and race wins this year due to their big increase and performance, or is time and development still needed?
jab.drfc, via Instagram

McLaren will need a lot of time and a lot of development to do that. The powerhouses of Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull aren't going to give up their positions at the front of the field any day soon.

It will need a bit of divine intervention for McLaren to get on the podium this year. Don't get me wrong, it's not impossible and as Sebastian Vettel showed in Melbourne luck still plays a big part in the end result. What we have to remember is that the McLaren of today is not the McLaren of the past. It is now just another F1 team, just like the others that are fighting for that best of the rest position of fourth in the constructors' championship.

By changing its power unit supplier to Renault, McLaren has put itself in a comparable position to the works Renault team and Red Bull, so that is good as a measure of its chassis competitiveness. But if you look back, the reason behind going with Honda in the first place was to give McLaren a chance to become a fully-fledged frontrunning works team.

McLaren felt that being just another customer of Mercedes, Ferrari or Renault was never going to put it in a good enough position to win championships, so it needed to do something different. Unfortunately, McLaren - management-wise and as a company - fell apart during that process and has now turned full circle.

Do you think the Mercedes will be worst at overtaking this year? If so, what in their design makes it so?
Graeme McConnell, via Twitter

In this respect, Mercedes is its own worst enemy. It has been so good at understanding and getting the best from what it has to put it in this position, but by optimising every last little detail it means that every surface on the car is probably working to 99% of its ultimate potential. All of these surfaces therefore suffer when they get in turbulent airflow.

Mercedes won't really suffer that much more than any other car, it's just that Mercedes has that bit extra to begin with, so loses that bit more when it happens. Then, the Mercedes becomes just another car.

It's the old saying 'the devil is in the detail' and the detail on the Mercedes is second to none. But that's what gives it the advantage to begin with, so sometimes you have to make your bed, lie in it and hope you are up front in clear air more often than not.

Why have none of the teams bothered to pursue an aero philosophy so that when following another car, they aren't so affected by turbulence. If they did, would it really be that detrimental to lap time?
@M1K33EE, via Twitter

I'm afraid it would be fairly detrimental to your ultimate lap time, so no team wants to give that away.

Overtaking is not easy, even if you didn't have the aerodynamic problems that you suffer because of the turbulence. With these cars, the braking distances have been reduced dramatically. Now, braking from something like 340km/h to 80km/h only takes about 100 metres - or a second in time.

When you consider that the overall length of a car is around five metres, that means that if you are in the tow and only a car's length behind, you have to brake 10% later just to draw even. And if you get it just that little bit wrong the stewards will be down on you like a ton of bricks.

Also, the regulations limit the amount of time you can run in the windtunnel. When this was unlimited, you could take more time to understand things a little bit better and see which surface suffered from turbulence more than others. That didn't necessarily mean you made lots of changes, but you could experiment more.

Now, with the regulations that are currently in place, the best way is to get the most out of your aerodynamic package. As we discussed in the question above about Mercedes, if you can do that and qualify on pole then sail off into the distance on as many occasions as possible then its job well done.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Mercedes-style nose compared to the other cars?
@leftfooted, via Twitter

The main objective at the front of an F1 car is to reduce the blockage behind the trailing edge of the front wing and to allow as much mass airflow as possible to pass inside the front tyres. This is why the chassis is the minimum cross section area is as high as possible - to open up that gap as much as you can.

The Mercedes nose is narrower than most, but where it joins the chassis-front bulkhead it increases in width to the regulation requirement of 30cm. However, this narrow nose allows more airflow to spill over the sides into the opening underneath. Then, the ski ramp section manages that airflow and presents it to the bargeboards and leading edge of the floor in a more uniform condition.

The advantages are that it produces more downforce, is more consistent or is more efficient. You would accept any of these three as a benefit, but there is no golden bullet - it is all about getting everything working together. If Ferrari was to bolt on a Mercedes nose, it would suffer losses and have to start developing everything else downstream to optimise it. And if Ferrari got it all working as one, then it might just end up slightly better than with what it had originally.

The unfortunate thing is that three or more months would have passed by and in that time it won't have moved forward, it will have just more or less stood still while Mercedes has continued to progress in other areas.

How significant is it if the bargeboards aren't totally radical like the Red Bull ones compared to McLaren?
Subhan Zafar, via Facebook

For 2017, the bargeboard area was opened up to allow more room for exotic and exciting components to be developed. It is a very powerful area and varies a lot from car to car.

I would say the bargeboards contribute to in excess of 15% of the car's overall downforce. They help the front wing performance by extracting the airflow coming off the trailing edge of the front wing and they also help with introducing the airflow to the leading edge of the underfloor in a more uniform manner.

There are lots of parts to them now, both horizontal, vertical and a combination of both, making this area work very three-dimensionally. So, it's all about understanding that three-dimensional flow, which is where a very detailed CFD analysis is required.

With CFD, you can understand what the airflow away from the surface is doing as well as what's happening on the surface. Detailed component geometry changes in certain areas will affect the surrounding airflow.

As the aerodynamicists like to say, it's now all about the flow structure, not just each individual part. The days of being in the windtunnel trimming up a small piece of aluminium, taping it onto the model and seeing what it does are long gone.

How accurate an indicator of form for the season do you think the Australian Grand Prix was?
James Williams, via email

Unfortunately, I think it was a reasonable indication and not that different to what pre-season testing told us. My biggest worry is that Mercedes is still playing with the situation a little bit.

If I were in its shoes and felt that I had a little bit in hand, I would unleash it slowly and I think that is what Mercedes did during qualifying in Melbourne. When push came to shove in Q3, Lewis Hamilton found a lot more than just putting in a good lap, so I think there is still something more available if and when required.

We can't blame Mercedes for this, it is down to the others to keep up - there always have been and always will be winners and losers. When you consider that, relative to what Mercedes was able to do over the winter, Ferrari lost in excess of half-a-percent of relative performance and, at best, most of the others stood still. So I won't be surprised if Mercedes goes on to win a fifth championship double in succession as Ferrari managed during the Michael Schumacher era.

How much of a Ferrari copy is the Haas?
Ashley Quint, via Twitter

Now that's the million dollar question and I think the word copy is the thing that is difficult to quantify.

Every team in the pitlane has contracted a photographer or two to take detailed pictures of opposition cars, and they will be told what components the team wants details of and what angles to take those pictures from. After the weekend, the team will be supplied with these pictures and they will be analysed in detail and some of the components tested in either CFD or the windtunnel. As I said earlier, it is not about fitting a single component and suddenly getting your 'eureka' moment, it is about it all working together.

Haas will have done exactly this and because of its close technical relationship with Ferrari, and the fact that it uses many parts supplied by Maranello, it will have focused on Ferrari as a team. After all, it is very difficult to build a jigsaw using parts from lots of different puzzles - it is better to concentrate on building one.

It is no coincidence that the Haas car looks a bit like last year's Ferrari. It was a very successful car and Haas now uses the front and rear suspension, power unit, transmission and driveline and probably lots more. You don't buy the front or rear suspension as individual components - they will come as a unit and that will include the chassis pickup point locations etc. All this, including the aerodynamic shaped wishbones, will have an effect on the air flowing across the complete car.

Is it right or is it wrong? Who knows, but as long as Haas has complied with the regulations as far as what a team is allowed to purchase from another team, then it exploited the system to its maximum for the best benefit. And for a small team still building itself up, that's vitally important.

Why has Force India had a drastic decline in performance compared to 2017
beppevolo97, via Instagram

I'm not so sure it is a drastic decline, it's more that a few other teams have just done a better job. It's never all in your own hands, and being competitive is only relative to the competition and you just don't know how others are going to perform until you get to the first race when everyone is trying to achieve the same thing at the same time.

Force India seemed to concentrate on getting its mechanical package to the initial pre-season tests and then follow up in Melbourne with an aerodynamic update kit, but I think it underestimated the opposition and the update kit just wasn't enough.

That, combined with that fact that fitting a new aerodynamic package means that you need to re-visit the mechanical setup, probably meant Force India never got the best out of anything.

I have said on many occasions it is better to get 100% out of a lesser package than 90% out of potentially a better package so it's very easy to trip yourself up by trying too hard. That said, I think Force India will have been fairly disappointed with how it performed in Melbourne because if both Haas cars hadn't dropped out of the race, the end result would have been that it wasn't even in with a sniff of a point.

Force India now knows where it stands and, in the past, it has normally improved as the season progresses. This season, that is going to be vitally important as I am sure McLaren, Renault and Haas aren't going to stand still. So, that fourth position in the constructors' championship and the money it brings is going to be a very coveted position.

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