Clearly the issues facing the Woking F1 team in 2015 have been predominantly engine related. To bring some perspective to this mater, here is a summary of the average ‘mileage’ per engine for each F1 manufacturer.
Mercedes leads the way with 2,779km per ICE whilst Honda is at the bottom of the pile with just 1,029km per ICE.
Ferrari have accumulated 2,114km per engine whilst Renault have a mere 1,276km for each of the ICE’s.
Yet McLaren are pushing on with the car and will deliver a ‘B’ verison of their MP4-30 at the upcoming Austrian GP. A new floor, wings and associated aero bodywork is expected to appear together with a new ‘short’ style nose, similar to that of Red Bull.
Last night, the latest news from McLaren was revealed on twitter: “News from MTC: We can confirm that the new MP4-30 nose box has passed the FIA crash test and will be available to use from the Austrian GP.”
TJ13 has learned that Honda are also expected to be bringing some “refinements” to their power unit for the race at the Red Bull Ring, which will improve both reliability and performance.
The word at present is, McLaren-Honda expect their two cars to finish and both within the top ten.
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Would it give extra perspective to do the same calculation as at this time 2014?
The fascinating thing is you could remove “and within the top ten” from your last sentence and it would be just as amazing an achievement for the team. Imagine they are rather desperate to get ALO some points as aside from the boys at Manor, I believe he is the only driver left with 0 points on the board.
Ive been dreaming of this from the start, hope top 10 ,
I’m not really expecting McLaren to perform that well in Austria to be honest after the horror show in Canada. We were told to expect good things there and all that happened was Alonso went backwards in the race faster than Marty McFly. In Canada it seemed qualifying was the strongest part of the weekend, which was odd, as the race always seemed better in the other rounds. I think Hungary could be a good race for them though. Track most like Monaco where they were both comfortably in the top 10.
Canada was always going to be their worst race, it’s the race that most depends on engines and brakes (apart from maybe Monza?). I think in the race the engines were literally being flogged to try and keep up.
Slightly off subject but here in Auckland, New Zealand, the recently built and opened Bruce McLaren Retirement Home the subject of much media advertising and promotion. Seems pertinent given the consistent retirements the team has been experiencing……….
We all hope that McLaren will recover. McLaren’s slow slide since 2013 has really hurt the world of F1.
I have serious doubts that Mclaren problems are just engine-related, although this might have the largest share. If you look closely at inboard images, it is apparent that both Jenson and Fernando struggle much more with their driving wheels to keep their racing lines than their competitors, specially in medium to high speed corners. Also in inboard camera footing, looking at the behaviour of their front wing through the suspension struts, one can see an enourmous amount of vibration, far larger than in any other car, from Mercedes to Manor. I’m inclined to believe that Mc has shot off the target in both directions this year…
@JMC
“If you look closely at inboard images, it is apparent that both Jenson and Fernando struggle much more with their driving wheels to keep their racing lines than their competitors, specially in medium to high speed corners. ”
Is it possible we’re seeing the effects of Jense and Fred valiantly leading development at Woking? Both have a history of saddling their teams with racing trucks. Think Jense in his Honda years, and 2nd part of the Brawn season; and think Fred half a decade at Ferrari…
At the beginning of the year reports were that the McLaren chassis was one of the most efficient on the grid. If it’s true that it has now regressed, questions must be asked of what was the driver feedback to senior engineers….
Double finish in the top 10 would take a lot of DNFs…
I am hoping they continue toiling like they are doing now. I am enjoying watching them flail about in the bottom half, after the countless times they managed to cock-up in winning positions in recent years with Hakkinen, Raikkonen and Hamilton, I cannot bring myself to feel any sympathy for them now. McLaren finishing in the top-10 would take a hell of a lot of bad luck for other teams, that won’t be happening.