Is McLaren's return to Mercedes a humiliation?

It seems humiliating for McLaren to be going back to Mercedes engines when it doesn't seem like many years ago it was ditching them. Do you think this switch will actually help? Surely three changes of engine supplier in quick succession can only disrupt the team, and Williams isn't exactly thriving with Merc power.

David Allen, via email

I don't think it's humiliating. McLaren changed from Mercedes to Honda for the right reasons because it wanted to win, and competing against the works Mercedes team using the same engine meant that would be very difficult.

Honda was able to focus fully on McLaren, but unfortunately that's where it went wrong as the team's demands compromised Honda's packaging. Combined with McLaren losing its way, the end result was a disaster.

We all said that the change from Honda to Renault engines for 2018 left McLaren with no place to hide and it proved correct. McLaren's season last year wasn't any better than it had been experiencing with Honda, but at least this gave it the impetus to drastically overhaul its racing and technical structure.

McLaren is a team with high ambitions and the shareholders have fairly deep pockets. It's not the McLaren of the past when Ron Dennis ruled the roost, but it still has the feeling that it can compete with the best.

Currently, McLaren is best of the rest and has realised that having no hiding place with Mercedes power will give it the reference point it needs.

It's true Williams isn't exactly setting the world alight, and Racing Point is having a disappointing season, so a Mercedes engine isn't a silver bullet in itself.

But McLaren feels it's now on an upward trajectory and wants equal engine performance with Mercedes. That doesn't mean it will beat Mercedes, but it will have the definitive reference.

As for changing engine suppliers and what that brings with it, yes it will be more work than sticking with what you have.

But it is a lot easier than it used to be. The engine sizes and the mounting positions etc are all defined in the regulations - unfortunately for Formula 1 as a whole it's not like the old days when you might go from a V8 to a V12.

There are lots of ancillary parts around the outside of the engine, but again every power unit supplier has more or less the same, so packaging will take more effort but it will also give the opportunity to optimise this area.

Other than the cosmetic side of things, to what extent do teams take with them to a grand prix the modern equivalent of tin snips, aluminium sheet and a bag of rivets? Do they have a lathe in the truck, can they add or repair carbonfibre, invent a better bracket etc at the track, or is everything covered by spares and the diktats of the design office?
Steve Barnett, via email

A very high percentage of replacement components will be from spares that are carried either in storage units for flyaways or the truck for European races.

Nowadays, everything is so detailed that no element is left to just mock up and make. That's why the teams have increased in size so much over the past 20 to 30 years. Everything is modelled, stressed, manufactured, rig tested, re-optimised, remade, rig tested and only then would it be signed off for circuit use.

But you always need to be ready for the unexpected and we have seen the unexpected happening on many occasions. Take Austria, for example, where everyone suffered front-wing and endplate problems from hitting the raised kerbs. Overnight, these areas will have been beefed up to make them more robust.

Regularly we see floor splitters, bits of bargeboards and other aerodynamic turning vanes flying off the cars - even the odd engine cover or sidepod. If a reason for these failures cannot be identified, then these parts will all be strengthened or have an extra fixing or fixing bracket fitted.

The teams need the tools required to achieve that, but more importantly they need someone on site that can carry out that type of work.

It was very different in the past and even worse for small teams. I have had many failures of components like the front wing, rear wing and suspension. Some of these came from design loading problems, vibration, material problems or simple construction problems. None of them should have happened and none of them were intentional, but the important thing is to react to them.

If you just stick on another one from spares the same thing might happen, so the failure needed to be analysed very quickly and rectified before the car could be sent out on track again.

The hardest part is you also needed to give the driver the confidence that you have identified and fixed it.

Nowadays, it would all be carbonfibre work and I'm sure the teams will have the equipment to carry out repairs efficiently or improve the strength or stiffness of a component if required. There might be a small lathe or the odd set of 'tin snips', but I'm not sure they would be used very often.

Why were the front six not able to follow each other at Singapore, but down the field they were running nose to tail lap after lap?
Antony O'Brien, via email

The reason the top six are the top six is that the cars are producing more downforce. Because of this, when they get in traffic they lose more downforce.

To get more downforce from the same set of regulations means that every aerodynamic surface is working just that little bit nearer its ultimate limit. Every turning vane and its vortices will be more accurately trained on any other component that it's affecting, so when a frontrunning car gets in turbulence the airflow on these surfaces separates and you get a loss of downforce.

You will lose downforce over the complete car, but as the front hits the turbulence induced by the leading car, first you lose more front downforce. This then affects the airflow to the rest of the car and you lose rear downforce as well.

If we were to take a Mercedes in free air, it would probably be producing something like 10% more downforce than a Racing Point, but following another car they would not be very far apart. Racing Point is not doing anything wrong, it's just that the set of circumstances means it doesn't have the engineering power or tools to achieve what Mercedes can achieve.

I'm at a loss to understand why the FIA is involving the teams in sorting out the regulations for 2021. Surely they know the teams won't agree on anything as self preservation sets in? Wouldn't it be better for them just to present the teams with the rules and regulations as they see fit and say take it or leave it?
Martin Catlin, via email

I agree with you 100%. But it all originates from the teams being given a say in how Formula 1 was going to go forward. Bernie Ecclestone saw that everyone being united was the best way to go, but this has now come back to bite Liberty Media.

The teams, especially the big ones, have got too powerful. They get paid more than the smaller teams and they have more say in changes, so why should they agree to changes that will potentially impact their performance and income? For Ferrari to have a veto on any regulation change is just silly, but that's the way it is, so why should it give it up?

I don't see a way out of this stalemate. We are only a few weeks away from the publication of what was intended to be a regulation change that would bring back close-combat racing, but with every day it seems to be getting diluted more and more.

Over the past few grands prix the racing at the front has been good and the racing in the midfield has been good, but the main problem is that the gap between the two has been too big.

Yes, the cars themselves must be more aerodynamically consistent when trying to follow each other, but the main reason for this divide is the money allocation. No set of regulations will close the field up and changing the regulations will actually increase that gap between the haves and the have nots.

I believe open source/open inspection is a better way forward on cost-cutting rather than an outright cap. Do you agree?
@MJB_86, via twitter

I don't believe that a cost cap will work and the levels that they are currently talking about will have no effect on the budgets of the small teams.

More equal distribution of income would be a start, but the smaller teams need even more than that to get the performance improvement required to get near the front.

Haas has set a good example of how things can be done by using whatever is allowable from another team (in its case Ferrari) but the older, more traditional teams are more stubborn.

They want to keep their own identity, and rightly so - they are what they are from standing alone and they have created their own history. But the times are changing.

I was still involved directly in F1 when the use of standard components was first talked about and I was against it because I wanted my team to create its own package. But there are many components that make up a car that no one ever sees and that don't have an impact on performance.

The other thing is, works teams like Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault have a direct connection to huge engineering resources for their road cars, so the question is when do the two overlap and how is this going to be controlled?

For an engineer from the F1 team to go off and spend a couple of months in the automotive power steering or whatever department and devote their time to a more F1-focused system would not be impossible. The application might be completely different, but they will improve their understanding just by being involved in any research.

It was great to read your memories of Johnny Herbert's 1999 Nurburgring win recently. I've always been fascinated by Stewart's performance that season and how it came back from a really poor 1998 to look like it might even win races on merit. How did it turn things around that winter, and can you share some anecdotes from the early rounds?
Javier Lopez, via email

The second year in Formula 1 is much more difficult than the first. Basically, if you are organised and have a well-structured plan, you end up with more time to get everything together for your first attempt. The second year you end up expanding and because you are racing and reacting to that, you end up with less time but with higher expectations.

We went through exactly the same with Jordan from 1991 to '92 as Stewart did from '97 to '98. The biggest benefit Stewart had was consistency on the engine front. Yes, the engine might have been a different model or version, but it was still a Cosworth-produced component. For Jordan we went from a Cosworth engine produced in Northampton to a Yamaha engine produced in Japan.

I joined Stewart in November 1998 and at that time the car concept was finalised and in the early stages of construction. Alan Jenkins and his team had done a good job as far as the concept was concerned, but I felt I could add a few things to the overall package.

We increased the chassis stiffness dramatically and changed a few things on the front and rear suspension geometry to try to make best use of the tyres, but in general it was solid design.

There were still a few areas like the sidepods and underfloor that we could optimise aerodynamically, so room for further improvement, but you have to commit to the start of the season at some point.

Johnny's win at the Nurburgring was indeed the highlight of the season, but there were other good points. What needs to be remembered is that there were only points to sixth, so as I have said many times you could be having a great season, finishing seventh in every race and scoring nothing.

In those days, we had a similar situation to now with three big teams to beat. McLaren, Williams and Ferrari were all right up there, so getting into that top six was no easy task.

We qualified in the top six 11 times, with one pole position in France, and finished in the points 11 times, with that one win at the Nurburgring. There were 16 races that season, so in 32 starts we qualified and finished top-six in over 33% of the season, which wasn't bad.

But we wanted and expected more. If reliability - especially on the engine front, but in general overall - had been a little better, we would have managed it.

I still believe that if Jenkins had stayed on and handled the political side of things with Ford and I had concentrated on the car, we would have been a stronger team than what happened when it became Jaguar. I was never very good at politics and tend to call a spade a spade, but I enjoyed getting stuck into the car design and development.

Jackie Stewart was a pleasure to work for - hard but fair. He knew what it took to be successful and he kept driving everyone to achieve that goal, but he had time for everyone.

He knew everyone in the factory by name and he talked to and listened to them, but more importantly he knew that most of them had families - and he is a dedicated family man - so he had time for them as families as well.

The F1 drivers have a valid point about the cars being too heavy and big (truck-like I think!). Surely those problems are directly tied to the ridiculous size of the current batch of cars? Do you think that the 2021 regs could drop the minimum weight to the mid/high-600kg level and as long as all safety parameters were met, would it matter that it may be a stretch for the teams to currently comply? Surely then they would have to consider substantially smaller cars (closer to the dimensions before the '00s) to approach the weight limit.

Would it matter that some cars were still 'overweight'? We all know how every kg can be critical, so there would be a good incentive to go on a diet! I appreciate that a lot of the current weight problems have been caused by safety and structural regulations, but I can't help feeling that the root cause is the excessive size driven by aero needs.

This could even result in interesting trade-offs between weight, complexity and aero...

Of course there may have to be strict controls of sophisticated and expensive lightweight materials, but if other clever ways were found to reduce the weight, bring it on!
Guy Dormehl, via email

It's interesting to think back to the Stewart question. In those days, the car weight was 600kg including the driver. Currently it's 740kg, so a 140kg increase over 20 years. Also, we had something like 40kg of ballast bolted under the car to bring it up to the weight limit and allow us to move the weight distribution as required.

I agree with the drivers and yourself that the cars are too heavy, but as the safety requirements increased over the years it's been very difficult to build cars anywhere near the weight limit. So the pressure was put on the drivers to be as light as possible. Thankfully that has been rectified for this season, just not really very well.

Personally, I think the driver weight should be set at a minimum of 78kg. If the driver is lighter than that, then driver ballast has to be added halfway up the seat back to equalise the driver's weight. This way, it minimises any advantage in the weight distribution or centre of gravity height.

If this was done, then you wouldn't be prioritising smaller, lighter drivers or forcing them to be just skin and bones and you could set the minimum weight limit at a lower figure than we currently have and then let the teams make the decision as to what gives them the best bang for their buck.

Remember, a 10kg reduction is, on average, a 0.3-second reduction in lap time, so we might just see teams build a smaller car with fewer bits on it.

The only negative would be that you would be playing into the hands of the bigger teams. They would be in a position to build more components to use over the season, giving them an advantage.

As I have said many times, force the teams to make the decisions. Don't try to achieve it by regulation.

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