McLaren must match Red Bull in 2018 – Alonso

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In the round-up: Fernando Alonso expects McLaren to match Red Bull’s level of performance in 2018 when they have the same Renault engines.

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The emergence of a video showing Lance Stroll’s view of his collision with Sebastian Vettel in Malaysia hopefully drew a line under the debate. Here’s Jordi’s take:

Watching the video in slow motion, Stroll does drift away from the apex slightly. He’s turning in, but a bit less than what would be needed to make the corner around while keeping a constant radius.

On the other hand, Vettel seems to be getting closer to the inside at a bigger rate than Stroll goes to the outside. And as far as I can tell, Stroll’s right wheels were significantly to the left of the middle of the track, so Vettel had plenty of room to go around Stroll and pick some marbles.

Vettel had plenty of room to his right, and absolutely no reason to get so close to Stroll while passing him. Stroll might have been able to take a tighter line, but that doesn’t take away the fact Vettel had a whole highway for himself and chose to crowd Stroll for whatever reason.
Jordi Casademunt (@Casjo)

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11 comments on “McLaren must match Red Bull in 2018 – Alonso”

  1. Hamilton preparing for a war in Japan… perhaps North Korea could be an unforeseen threat to his race win.*

    I’ve had an idea. It’s a long shot, but what would happen if they made rules that disallowed different engine settings? If the engine settings enter parc ferme just like every other part of the car, and cannot be adjusted inside the car (or remotely), just like every other part. Would we see teams fine tuning an engine for full race distances, allowing drivers to be pushing the car to the limit effectively all the time, even if that limit is lower? It’s something to consider.

    *Disclaimer: I’m joking

    1. Let’s look at it from an another viewpoint. If someone can extract more of it from their engine for 1 or 2 lap but their car is slower in races, it makes a better race, with closer racing (anyone remembers the mighty Trulli trains ? ).
      Also one of the reasons are for someone able to push their engine more for a shorter period is, that they have more reserves, they don’t need to run their engines at its peak performance in races to achieve wins, so they will have better reliability turned down to say 95% of engine perf. Renault does not have any reserves to push their engine over their long run performance, as they already run it on 100% in races. (and their reliability suffers because of it). Qualy engine modes are a thing since qualy engines got banned (we are talking about more than 10 years timeframe now)
      To ban qualy engine modes would be as artifical solution as the DRS. Renault and Honda needs to up their game and do their homework, pegging back Mercedes would be an unsporting and artifical answer to a problem in Renault’s household.

      1. Also, anything F1 needs in regulations is not even more technical restrictions…

  2. Well good on Fernando for coming out and saying that the Stoff was just better and quicker in the last race. He didnt make any excuses, he’s just come out and said it.

    I think Fernando is enjoying his position as the wise old master in the Mclaren garage with Stoff being his young apprentice. He should know how quick Stoff is by now, and will know he’s only going to get better.

    1. Yeah, probably getting used to the idea he might not win anything at all anymore. I mean, not even a race.

    2. If we can arrive at a conclusion regarding Alonso these past 3 years it is in fact that he is enjoying his time, no doubt about it

  3. Hamilton:

    “I’m confident in the car, confident in it working at some stages,” he said. “Just still this deep into the season I have no idea where it’s gonna be good, where it’s gonna be great like Silverstone or where it’ll be a real struggle like Malaysia or Singapore.”

    So. Not at all confident then!

  4. Roth Man (@rdotquestionmark)
    6th October 2017, 8:12

    I actually believe the Red Bull’s rapid improvement will help Lewis and take points off Seb. I think Suzuka will suit the Lewis and the RBs. If only the season started like this!

  5. That’s a big ask right there Fernando! You’re taking on the best chassis designer in the business and no-one has got close to him in real terms (considering the disparity of PU’s). I would like to see that, but it’s a steep mountain.

  6. great COTD, really draws a nice cogent line under the whole thing for me.

    1. And I disagree with it but there’s other headings on the topic with lots of commentary. Ah what the heck…it was made cotd on this round-up, so here we go again.

      SV not only leaves tons of room for LS on the outside of him, that is not even the room that was needed. Had LS bothered to look in both mirrors before he drifts away from the apex, he would have seen SV in the outside and certainly still had plenty of room to keep steering toward the apex, which no doubt he would have done had he only looked right instead of only ever looking left, as is blatantly obvious from LS’s onboard.

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