

The Circuit de Catalunya is known for being the place where teams like to update their cars, it is also the track where they do the most testing, both in the real world pre-season, and in the virtual world on the simulator.

The track has hardly changed year on year with the last significant adjustment to layout occurring some years ago. This allows for some interesting lap time comparisons and gives a look at which teams have made progress and which have not. Whilst there are mitigating factors such as changes to the technical regulations, temperature, wind direction a look over the best lap times of particular cars and drivers is still very revealing.

How slow is the McLaren?

The troubles of McLaren have been well documented this year, but is the MP4-28 really all that bad?

Well on paper at least it is faster around Barcelona than the MP4-27 of 2012 with Jenson Button at the wheel, but is slower than the old car overall. In qualifying the ’28’ managed to lap the track in 1m21.790 in the hands of Perez (Button’s best was a ‘22.355), whilst the ’27’ was on pole last year with a 1m21.707 set by Lewis Hamilton. Button’s best in that car was a 1m22.944.

In pre-season testing the best time from the MP4-28 was a 1m21.444 but it is not thought that the car was running fully in compliance with the regulations when that time was set.

However the cars should be faster in 2013 with the new softer tyres, and indeed the pole position time this year was almost a full second faster than the 2012 mark. So whilst the pace is over a second faster year on year McLaren has not been able to match that increase in pace. The reason why McLaren looks slow is that most of the other teams on the grid have moved forward by roughly the same 1 second margin, including Lotus, Ferrari and Red Bull. Some teams like Force India have improved by over a second moving them forward on the grid.

So would it be better for McLaren to switch back to the MP4-27?

The answer purely based on lap times is yes, but the situation is not that simple. In 2013 Pirelli substantially revised the tyres which would mean that McLaren would have to make the old car work with the new rubber, something it seems to be struggling to do already. Secondly all of its data comes from a car that technically very different so a switch would be very difficult to do. Indeed even if it did switch the MP4-27’s pole lap time was only 3 tenths of a second faster than that of Sergio Perez on Q3 in 2013 which is not enough to move up the grid.

What is wrong with the MP4-28?

When McLaren launched the MP4-28 most people expected the car to be a mild evolution of the MP4-27, which was the best car of the 2012 season. Instead what was shown off on that winter day in Woking was a totally different car, the chassis was much higher, abandoning the low nose concept of recent McLarens, and the front suspension had been switched from push rod to pull rod. This was a brave move considering that most teams have opted to develop evolutions of the 2012 cars as there is a new rule book being introduced at the end of 2013. Indeed the engineers at all teams are being stretched to the limit of the Resource Restriction Agreement Agreement as they also try to design complex new cars for 2014.

Fundamentally it seems that there is nothing wrong with the McLaren and according to the teams Managing Director Jonathan Neale the problem could be rooted in the wind tunnel. “We are essentially trying to sort out a correlation issue. It’s really important that we sort out the issues with the car and the correlation. All of the time you’ve got that lingering doubt of ‘hang on a second, what went went wrong, where did it go wrong and how do we fix it?’, you’ve got the opportunity for it to arise again” he revealed.

“I’m pleased with the way things are working and I think we’ve done a lot of very diligent work. We’ve had a straight-line test as well to be able to validate some of the information, but we’ll be cautious at this stage until we know where we’re at. Some things will work, some things won’t.”

McLaren uses not only its own wind tunnel but also that of TMG in Cologne, Germany (also used by other teams including Ferrari and Force India) so it may be struggling to get the different tunnels, CFD and track testing results to agree with each other. A problem that hit Ferrari in 2012.



Why is Caterham struggling to beat Marussia?

The Caterham CT03 is an interesting case when comparing lap times as it is essentially only a mildly updated CT01, and retains the same chassis. It too has made a step forward thanks to a large update kit fitted to the car in Spain. Its best lap in Q1 in 2013 (1m24.661) was six tenths faster than its best in 2012, and the 2013 time was set by a less capable driver.

In comparison at Bahrain the CT03 (with some updates) was 4 tenths slower than the CT01, but this deficit is almost certainly down to the difference in driver ability, something reflected in the Chinese Grand Prix where Charles Pic was roughly a second slower than Heikki Kovalainen had been a year earlier in essentially the same car.

Much to Caterhams irritation the biggest gains have been made by the back of the grid Marussia team,which has improved by a huge 1.8 seconds year on year, forcing the self styled ‘lean green racing machine’ to bring the aforementioned updates to Barcelona.



Whats gone wrong at Williams?

The other team to really suffer at Barcelona was Williams, which was second on the grid in 2012 with a 1.22.105, in 2013 the same driver, Maldonado, could only manage a 1m23.318, over a second down on his own pace. Williams of course seemed to find a sweet spot with the 2012 tyres at Barcelona and went on to win the race, in 2013 they seem to be further away than ever. The FW35 is only a mild evolution of the FW34 which suggests that the tyre change has really hit the team hard.

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