Why are brawn so dominant this year while McLaren are floundering.

I very rarely watch it and im very pleased for button but i have no understanding of the differences in cars this year.

Please explain….

can of worms.

Ross Brawn is the answer to your post.

the_lecht_rocks – Member

Ross Brawn is the answer to your post.

Is this about Andrew Sachs?

McLaren got thier design wrong. It is not giving enough down force and the car has no grip. Lewis is driving the car has hard as he can.

New regulations essentially.

Brawn/Honda 08 car was pants, so rather than expend any effort on it, they concentrated all their development time on the 09 car. Mclaren on the other hand were involved in a desperate all out battle with Ferrari in 08 which meant that the car whilst quick, was constantly having to be developed, with consequently less time spent developing the 09 version. Plus Mclaren took a more conservative approach to rear aerodynamic structures than Brawn, which is not the entire story, but certainly didn’t help.

Honda stopped development on last years rubbish car to concentrate on the car for this year. Brawn have benefited from that early development.

McLaren and Ferrari were putting all their efforts into fighting for st year’s championship, so less development for this year.

But yeah, definitely helps to have Ross Brawn on your team. The guy is a genius.

But Button, in that car, bloody brilliant. Can’t wait to Silverstone 😀

So – who is the better driver – Hamilton or Button?

“Why?”

As the others have said, Ross Brawn and loads of time to develop the car. I think the main reason though is that they read the rules better than the others, and everyone else is playing catch-up. All this talk of Ferrari and McLaren not starting their cars till later doesn’t really wash with me, their resources are so big they could probably build three cars simultaneously. I am surprised there is no consistent challenger – not that I’m bothered I hope Jenson wraps the title up asap even if it is boring!

I bet Brawn will be sporting new colours and primary sponsor at Silverstone too. JB has already said he’s getting his proper colours back on his helmet for the race.

We haven’t seen them in anything like equal cars.

IMO Hamilton is the best “racer” in that he can wrestle the car better if its not quite right and make the overtakes – Button is the best “driver” in that he is smooth, makes less mistakes and looks after his car batter.

they have different attributes.

What the muffin man said. Those in the know reckon that put in the same car the drivers would all be within 0.5 sec a lap of each other.

Schumacher.

What the muffin man said. Those in the know reckon that put in the same car the drivers would all be within 0.5 sec a lap of each other.

which is what top gear tried to do 😉

Button has also re-invented himself. Remember him getting out-qualified and out-raced by teammates (not necessarily of the caliber of Rubens) on a regular basis? It seems actually having a well balanced car really suits him – he never seemed to drive a rubbish car that well in the way some can.

0.5 sec is quote alot tho.

Honda stopped development on last years rubbish car to concentrate on the car for this year. Brawn have benefited from that early development.

BMW allegedly did the same (stop development last year to focus on a “title challenge” this year) and it hasn’t really got them anywhere. So there’s an element of Honda/Brawn pushing development in the right direction to get the best car within the regulations (along with Red Bull), where others haven’t been so succesful (McLaren, BMW).

0.5 sec is quote alot tho.

edit. this post was nonsense.

Which makes you wonder what it is Brawn and Red Bull both have that the others don’t…

Brawn himself, and Adrian Newey (Google him if you haven’t heard of him)…

Exactly! How many F1 titles in the last 20 years have been won by a team one of those didn’t have a major role in?

Can’t wait to Silverstone

Neither can I.

My darling wife brought us a weekend at a very nice hotel near Silverstone (with a shuttle service to the race course that avoids the queues apparently), reserved grandstand seats and pit passes for Saturday and Sunday of this year’s GP.

No idea how much it cost but I’m guessing it wasn’t cheap.

Could it not be that Brawn & Red Bull are better at interpreting the wind tunnel data than other teams are ? As track testing has been cut for all teams they use the wind tunnels more which can’t show them 100% how a car really performs on a track.

So the answer to your question really is the back room staff at Brawn and Red Bull are better with better leadership than the other teams are. I think I’m right in saying that over the last year or so both Ferrari & McLaren have had some fairly significant changes in there technical teams with people leaving and new prople coming on board.

One thing Ross Brawn always did well was exploit the rules. Rarely (if ever) did he do something definitely illegal under the regs, but he certainly found the grey areas and exploited them to their fullest. Look at the amount of complaints from his years at Benetton and Ferrari about flexible wings, hidden launch control etc and you’ll see what I mean.

This years Brawn is the same. He found the regulation with the biggest potential for stretching and did his work.

Maclaren are also struggling with having two relatively inexperienced drivers in their cars. Hamilton is a decent driver but he’s always had it his own way and has never had to help develop a poor car. Button has been helping his engineers make the most of rubbish for years. I think this season is actually doing hamilton the world of good. They’ll get the car right eventually, he’ll see how much work he has to put into a team to win and he’ll be a better driver because of it.

I built a new wind tunnel for Honda year before last, so its all down to me actually.

;o)

Nearly all the Champions in the past 15 or so years have been in either a Brawn designed car or a Newey one.

TandemJeremy – and looks after his car batter

I don’t even want to think what you mean there.

Could it not be that Brawn & Red Bull are better at interpreting the wind tunnel data than other teams are

One of the reasons the 08 Honda was so piss poor was that they had indeed set up the wind tunnel incorrectly…

Thing is, interpreting aero data even for these teams is notoriously difficult. The variables are immense and ever changing. On Thursday practice on a green track the Mclaren wasn’t that bad, but as it “rubbered up” the car’s grip went away in high speed corners…Even a tail wind on race day was upsetting the balance of the Red Bull around some of the faster corners. Truth is, the Brawn is just a better all round car, and is proving consistent.

wind tunnels are good

CFD is better (although you still a good idea to have a windtunnel to prove your CFD is actualy working)

The problem with wind tunels is they’r very labour intensive, you actualy have to build stuff, and know what questions to ask before the test. CFD could test several different wing mirror designs in a morning if you had the computing power, and every concieveable variable is saved for future analyis so rather than rellying on guesswork you can find out exactly what makes a part better or worse.