Now there’s nothing wrong with trying new things and setting up a car to be baised for a particular direction, but I think McLaren needs to get to basics with their car. The 2 different exhaust exits are symbolic of their problems. Forget the fancy stuff – just keep the car simple and work on making it fast.

With F1 testing resuming this week, it looks like we’ve been given a sneak peek of the 2009 grid courtesy of McLaren (picture from gpupdate.net):

I have to say, the car looks a lot better. While the rear wing is technically much less effective, it’s cleaner, and thus looks faster (important for the fans ). The front wing is still a bit ugly, but the limited flip-ups again make the car look cleaner.

Best feature all up though has to be the return of slick tyres!!

http://f1.automoto365.com/news/controller.php?lang=en&theme=default&month=10&year=2007&nextMode=GpNewsForm&news_id=28591

If everything in that article is true, I can’t believe how sub-standard the whole measurement process is (of both the fuel temp and the ambient temp).

In summary the article claims:

• FOM measure the ambient temperature as 37 degrees Celsius, while Bridgestone and Meteo France measured it as 33 degrees Celsius. Meteo France supplies all the teams with temperature information.
• The FIA measures the fuel temperature at the bottom of the fuel rig, yet the regulation states a requirement for the temperature of the fuel at the point where the fuel enters the tank of the car.

If you read what Ron said, it seems as though someone hacked into the McLaren radio during the 1998 Australia Grand Prix and falsely instructed Mika Hakkinen to enter the pits when he didn’t need to. To quote Ron:

Team strategy is what you bring to bear to win a Grand Prix. Team orders is what you bring to bear to manipulate a Grand Prix. And we do not, and have not, manipulated Grands Prix, unless there were some exceptional circumstances, which occurred, for example, in Australia (1998), when at that time someone had tapped into our radio and instructed Mika Hakkinen to enter the pits.

At the time I only ever saw it reported that Mika was called into the pits accidentally by the team, not by an outsider ‘tapping’ into their radio! I wonder who was responsible? A competitor? Or maybe a disgruntled fan?

All I want to know is how do you get in and out of the darn thing?

Instead of simply writing to the FIA to ask whether the device was legal, McLaren’s Paddy Lowe wrote to the FIA asking if McLaren could fit a device to their car that does “*insert description of Ferrari device here*”. The FIA stated they could use the device, but the flexibility of the floor would have to be tested without the device attached.

As a result, teams currently using the device (believe to be Ferrari and BMW) will have to ensure their floor is stiff enough to pass the flexibility test in Sepang without the sprung device attached (which was allowed in Melbourne).

Very clever McLaren!

Ferrari and McLaren look by far the quickest, with BMW next. After that, everyone else look as slow as each other.

The big improvers were Super Aguri. But even that wasn’t much of a surprise given talk that their chassis is largely based on that used by the Honda F1 team last year. The latest speculation is that Williams and Spyker are going to protest against the legality of the chassis of Super Aguri, Red Bull Racing and Squadro Toro Rosso.

I wonder if Super Aguri delayed the launch of their car until this week so that other teams wouldn’t have time to analyse their chassis to see exactly how similar it is to last years Honda? If so, very sneaky.. But it could just be that they were late in their manufacturing.. right?

I’m no lawyer, but if you ask me the Super Aguri may actually be the most legal car when compared with Red Bull Racing and Toro Rosso. This is because their chassis design is only used on their car (this year at least), whereas it could be that the RBR and Toro Rosso chassis this year are close to identical. An FIA article states:

“A constructor is a person (including any incorporated or unincorporated body) who owns the intellectual property rights to the rolling chassis it currently races, and does not incorporate in such chassis any part designed or manufactured by any other constructor of F1 racing cars except for standard items of safety equipment, providing that nothing in the Schedule 3 shall prevent the use of an engine or gearbox manufactured by a person other than the constructor of the chassis.”

It will be a very interesting couple of weeks to see how the protest turns out. Please note that all comments in this post are purely speculation and just a fans point of view..

Meanwhile ITV have reported that Schumacher has been offered a NASCAR test by team owner Ray Evernham. I don’t think there is much Ray could do to entice Schumacher to the NASCAR scene, but the first part of his quote was gold:

“I’ll put him in a red car, a real good car…”

The Bridgestone employee claimed he was wearing the overalls and mask to protect from small rubber particles that are released into the air when the tyres are cut for post-race inspection. The FIA has accepted this explanation and is not investigating the matter any further.

Michelin however are still said to be unhappy. They claim this type of protective clothing is not needed for tyre deconstruction and would only be required in the case of fumes or a toxic by-products (ie. from spraying the tyres).

A photo has surfaced of the Bridgestone engineer eating yoghurt (or ice cream), resulting in many jokes about the FIA ruling that “Bridgestone was not found to have had a performance advantage by applying yoghurt to their tyres.”

Bridgestone’s yoghurt man.