How to turn things around at McLaren and Williams

What is going on with McLaren and Williams? These two great giants seem stuck in a circle of underachievement. What would you do to fix their problems and get them back to the front?
Umar Ahmed, via email

The first thing I would do is kick some ass.

Nearly four years ago, when McLaren was talking rubbish about what it and Honda were up to and that it was a long-term plan, I said I didn't see anyone taking the situation by the scruff of the neck and trying to move the project forward. It was all just McLaren-speak.

As the years went past with Honda, McLaren then felt it had the best car in the pitlane - which again was McLaren-speak and an attempt to put the blame on its partner. It was a 'nothing to do with us, mate' attitude.

Now McLaren has Renault engines, it has nowhere to hide and the management structure has been changed in a positive direction. But unfortunately it still doesn't have the right person who knows how to lead the technical structure.

Zak Brown has publicly said McLaren has been in a log jam for the last few years. He's right, but you need someone with the knowledge and the balls to get in there and release that jam.

I don't think Brown is the man for that, and his role is to run the team and work on the commercial side. But whatever happens, it's going to be down to the deep pockets of the shareholders to fund McLaren for the foreseeable future. Brown has said the process is ongoing, so let's see what happens in terms of the technical leadership.

At Williams, I think it is a little simpler. It has lost its way since 2015 but is still, in my book, an engineering company that goes racing.

Someone needs to take on the responsibility of kicking the ass there. Claire Williams is not a team principal with a technical background and needs someone to be her eyes and ears on that side.

Are F1 teams today simply too big in terms of being able to keep control of the technical direction, car concept, etc? Surely with hundreds of people it becomes impossible to keep things together?
David Jones, via email

It's a very difficult task, and the flatter the organisation's structure the more difficult it is.

I would compare it to an oil tanker. If you're going in the right direction then everything is fine and you can proceed at full speed. But if, like Williams and McLaren, you find yourself blown off course, then you need that one person to steer it back in the right direction.

They also need to be strong enough and bold enough to alter that trajectory as they get more information.

They need to understand the situation well enough to weed out the good ideas from the bad, but they also need to be able to work with a very big group of people who will all have egos and who need to be handled delicately. If you can get this all working positively then you can have a Mercedes situation.

Over the past few years, I've heard many stories of upgrades being outdeveloped even before they reached the car. This is just poor management and a waste of time, effort and money for everyone.

Is Ferrari's improved pace at high speed down really down to their new floor, or have the engine and other updates helped?
Dan Kinkaid, via Twitter

The Mercedes update for the Austrian Grand Prix was its big package and the Ferrari step introduced for the British GP appears, on face value, to match it.

Remember, Silverstone hasn't been a good track for Ferrari for many years - in fact in 2016 and '17 Ferrari was at its least competitive there in terms of relative pace - but this year it was right up there.

Yes, Lewis Hamilton had his Kimi Raikkonen-induced problem in the race but in qualifying it really was nip and tuck, and we could easily have had a Ferrari on pole position.

In terms of trying to pin down the inputs generating that improvement, it's difficult to quantify - in modern F1, performance gains are the sum of many incremental changes. Ferrari's Silverstone upgrade will have helped the performance of the underfloor.

The engine update will always be a step forward, provided it doesn't also bring reliability problems, and with the complexity of these cars I'm pretty sure there will have been a few other little updates we can't see.

Development is all about recognising where you are weak and addressing it. So your development direction must be very well thought out, otherwise you risk ending up spending all your resources to develop something that has no performance left to unlock.

I used to always say it is no good spending all your time trying to develop a new rear-view mirror as there is not a big enough return from it.

But lately I think I've been proved wrong, since everyone is now coming up with more quirky solutions. But I suppose if you have a couple of hundred people to keep working on development day in, day out, then you have the resources to look at everything.

Is it not the case that if cars had no front wings, then cars running together ought to have more similar traction on their front tyres? And if so, both cars would be able to get through the corner at more similar speeds?

Any reduction in downforce at the front of the car would have to be accommodated by a reduction at the rear of the car lest the car have horrendous understeer. So wouldn't we go back to the days of F1 cars sliding through corners (which would be fun for us to watch) and having cars following closely enough at the start of long straights to be able to draft and pass?
Peter Jon White, via email

It is more or less impossible to do away with aerodynamics completely. Once learned, never forgotten.

On the way there is lots that can be done to improve the situation, but it will take a major regulation change to achieve this. Formula 2 cars, which are the support act at F1 races, are better at racing than the current grand prix cars - so there is somewhere to start.

The FIA and Liberty Media are just about to put forward their proposals for 2021 publicly and there is a smaller change being introduced for 2019. So let's wait and see the scope and detail of what they propose. I'm not holding my breath that either proposal with have any effect on the racing.

Many people seem to be obsessed with overtaking, but I don't think that is what's necessary. I just want closer racing with the realistic chance of an overtaking manoeuvre being completed.

So I am completely against using the DRS to create artificial overtaking and also against these extra-long or triple DRS zones.

I would like to see a study done that would allow DRS to be used if you were within a window of, say, five seconds until you are within one second of the car in front of you. Then it would be up to you to pull off the overtake without it.

The leader, because they don't have a car in front of them, wouldn't be able to use it, so this should mean that the pack stays closer together for longer.

It would be very easy to simulate and perhaps the numbers would need altering, but anything that could be done to keep the pack close together would be a positive step.

I'm also afraid that the days of watching Ronnie Peterson sliding the Lotus 72 through a 150mph corner are long gone.

The current cars' aerodynamics just don't allow for that. Get more than about three or four degrees out of line and you're in the kitty litter (or massive asphalt run-off area).

Also, the tyres in the old days were crossply and didn't mind high slip angles. The change to radials means the tyre itself just doesn't have that window to allow it to slide and still offer grip.

Haas had problems with parts breaking without any external cause. When it comes to carbon fibre, how many layers do you need to make it strong enough, how does this vary from part to part and how do you judge the strength before manufacturing it?
Jon Muller, via email

Every part of the car has a different load case, so it is not as simple as coming up with a lay-up and that's it. Also, there is the impact of driving over the kerbs to consider.

As far as Haas is concerned, it is still a relatively new team to F1 so its database of component load cases will still be relatively small compared with other teams.

All components that are designed to withstand a certain load, such as suspension components, etc, will be designed with a safety factor built in.

Let's say the maximum the team has seen on the track for a certain component is 1000kg. Then a safety factor will be added, let's say 20%, making the ultimate load case 1200kg.

That component will then be tested on a rig to that load before it will be used on the track. If the load case that you have is correct and the safety factor is enough, then you shouldn't have any problems. If not, expect a few long nights.

When you see bodywork components falling off it is usually through vibration from running over kerbs and it is very difficult to get much data on these failures. That, combined with trying to save weight, means that the component just wasn't strong enough for the job.

Would a move to steel brake discs extend the braking distance significantly? And can we also get rid of tyre warmers?
Simon Wood, via Facebook

Over the past decade, steel brakes have come on leaps and bounds and are now offer very good stopping power. The main problem with them would be the weight; they are much heavier than carbon brakes.

When Alex Zanardi drove for Williams in 1999 he tried out steel brakes because he felt they had much better feel. The team was surprised by the performance of them.

Carbon brakes are very temperature sensitive and when cold, let's say up to 400C, have very little stopping power.

After that it is like a light switch, which is what happened to Sebastian Vettel in Turn 1 at Paul Ricard. They come on very strong up to around 1000C, then they start to fade and wear dramatically, which is when you start seeing that black dust coming out of the wheels.

As far as the tyre warmers are concerned, I agree with you - but when drivers tried not using them they complained about how dangerous it was, and how it took an extra lap to get the tyres to work.

It is another driver skill that is being thrown away. Removing the tyre warmers could prompt a few more driver errors on the first race lap and out-laps from pitstops.

I was really surprised that we didn't go that route because the F2 cars use Pirelli tyres and they don't have tyre warmers, so it can be done.

Perhaps our F1 drivers are just that bit too precious.

Can you give some insight on aero differences between cars that perform well in low-speed corners vs high-speed corners?
Jed G Knudsen, via Twitter

If the downforce a car produces is linear through the speed range, then it would multiply at the square of the speed. A set of very rough numbers would give you the following: at 100km/h you would have 280kg, at 200km/h 1120kg, and at 300km/h 2520kg.

But it is never quite like this, and it is the teams that understand how to manage airflow separation the best which end up with a car that has good grip at low speeds and adequate grip at high speeds.

What you have to consider is that a car spends more time in slow-speed corners than it does in high-speed corners. This is simply because of the speed the car is travelling at, and means there is more time to gain from a car that has more grip in low speed than there is in the high speed. You are in the slow corners far longer than fast ones.

Let's take the Red Bull as an example, with its high-rake setup (high rear ride height). In low-speed corners, the front wing is closer to the ground, which improves its performance. The rear diffuser is higher, making the whole underfloor work as a diffuser. At low speed, this is exactly what you want. Just look at Red Bull's dominant performance in Monaco.

When the car is travelling faster and gets closer to the ground, the front wing needs to have some airflow separation or the centre of pressure would move forward too much and make the car too pointy.

When you get the front wing to separate controllably, then you also need the diffuser to also have airflow separation to balance things up or the car will have too much understeer.

Get this all working controllably and understandably and you should have a car that has good grip and balance in low-speed and high-speed corners. If you don't get it right you end up with a Williams.

If you took one of the old three-litre V10 engines and could somehow shoehorn it into a modern chassis, how close to a competitive time would this hypothetical car be?
@TemporaryCarpet, via Twitter

If done correctly, it would produce a very similar lap time.

Both of these power units could produce around 1000bhp. The current V6 turbo with the ERS would have more torque at lower RPM off the corner because of the electrical power, but the three-litre V10 would just have the edge on power at high RPM.

The main difference would be that the three-litre V10 would probably be using twice the fuel to achieve it. But with that would be the return of the fantastic, ear-piercing scream, since it would be revving its proverbials off.

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