While it hasn’t yet looked likely to trigger the kind of diffuser-style controversy that overshadowed the start of last season, the rear wing design on McLaren’s impressively quick MP4-25 has nevertheless attracted attention from at least one rival team in recent weeks.
Speaking from Warsaw where he launched a new partnership with investment house X-Trade Brokers this week, managing director Jonathan Neale was in the chair for the latest Vodafone McLaren Mercedes phone-in, and unsurprisingly faced several questions on the wing issue.
Neale was also asked about whether McLaren's 2010 car suits one of its world champion drivers better than the other, his hunch on where the team is in the pecking order, and whether the current slow pace of the grid's three new outfits is a potential concern heading into the Bahrain season-opener.
Q: Will there be any modifications to the MP4-25 for Bahrain compared to the configuration you ran in the Barcelona test?
Jonathan Neale: There are some pretty low level ones, but nothing night and day.
We continue to work through details around the efficiency of our pit stops. There are one or two minor aerodynamic developments that will go on the car, but it will look and feel very much like the car we had at the end of the Barcelona test.
Q: Whereabouts on the car are the aero modifications?
JN: Some around the diffuser and we’re yet to make a decision on what we do about sidepod wings. There's the usual arsenal of stuff lined up to come over the next few races.
Q: Have you had any clarification regarding the legality of the car’s rear wing ahead of the FIA inspection in Bahrain?
JN: Charlie [Whiting] is not inspecting really, but he’s going to continue to confirm that he's happy, which is what we’ve tried to do all the way through this development piece.
It was regrettable that his plane got delayed by 24 hours while leaving Sao Paulo on Friday, because it would have been nice to take the opportunity with him and some of the other FOTA team members being present in the UK just to finish that off [and have the inspection carried out].
But we're quite relaxed about it. We've spoken to Stefano [Domenicali] and some of the other team principals and colleagues there, and of course everybody wants to see clarity and we're doing the same thing on a few other teams’ innovations.
There's no hint at the moment that there’s anything untoward going on though. We're quite confident the car is legal.
Q: Why do you think you're car has been singled out?
JN: We don't feel singled out to be honest. Charlie and the FIA have been very cooperative throughout.
Q: Are you taking a backup rear wing to Bahrain just in case your current package is deemed illegal?
JN: We're not taking a radically different package, but you never know what the stewards are going to do on the day.
We get the best advice that we can from the FIA and we work with them in the interests of transparency.
If the stewards on the day decide on a different course of action though it's still our duty to go racing – so we have a contingency, but we haven’t put much effort into that and I’m not planning to deploy it.
Q: It seems like a similar situation to the first race last year when there was a question over the legality of double diffusers, and then more protests after the race. Is this scenario likely again? You’ve talked about discussing it with Stefano Domenicali, but aren’t Red Bull the ones who are agitating a bit?
JN: I have a pretty good idea, knowing Adrian [Newey] and the guys as I do, that they have a pretty good idea of what's going on with our car. They might not have figured it all out yet, but they won’t be far away from it.
Christian's [Horner] oblique reference to Ferrari being a bit more [excited] about it then they were… I don't know.
They sought clarity. The teams are quite happy to do that. We're talking to them all just to make sure that if there are any concerns, then they get an opportunity to address them with us.
But you’re right: ultimately it will depend on what the competitors do on the day.
Q: Are you able to say yet whether the MP4-25 suits Jenson Button's or Lewis Hamilton's driving style better?
JN: I can’t say at this stage. We’re still getting to know Jenson and his preferences on set-up and how we best dial the package in for him.
It's a good question though, because I’ve asked myself the same thing about who will have the advantage, if any, given the characteristics of the car and the nature of the tyres we take to each race.
Lewis is a more aggressive braker and turner of the car so he tends to drive the corners in more of a 'V' shape; whereas Jenson’s renowned super-smooth style does mean that he carries more momentum in the corners and loads up the car with more lateral G-forces.
Both have the propensity to damage tyres if that's done in an unguarded way.
So at this stage there's no separate development plan. I don't see anything about the way that the vehicle dynamics package works that would cause us to deviate, as perhaps we have done in the past, for these drivers.
But it's early days and we'll know more after two or three races.
Q: Did you have enough dry running at Barcelona to get a clear read on your relative performance, or are you still in the dark to a great extent?
JN: To a degree, yes we were able to get a read.
At some point in testing you have to run out of fuel on the circuit to check just how low you can go and make sure all your warning systems work and tell you it's about to happen.
You also know that there's a huge range in lap time, so when someone was running round at 1m25s, then they were probably running over 100kg or 150kg [of fuel], and there’s not much point in being on 135kg. So you can book-end that pace pretty well.
I think most of us are looking at Ferrari's enviable consistency on long-run pace and seeing that there's clearly a lot of effort gone into that.
You can see from the Barcelona times that ourselves, Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes and even Force India are very strong on light fuel and new tyres, so I think qualifying is going to be really tight.
Q: Last year’s MP4-24 was best suited to high-downforce, low-speed tracks; what makes you confident that the MP4-25 will be better across the board?
JN: I don’t know at this stage that we are confident the new car will be competitive across the board.
Obviously we've had limited time on these tyres and these [heavy] fuel loads, and the cold circuits never really give you a full signal of just how much damage you can do or how tolerant your system is.
Jenson and Lewis both commented about the way that the car ran through [the high-speed] turns three and nine at Barcelona, saying that it felt really planted, so that gives us good confidence in our high-speed corner performance.
But at low speed, with these high fuel loads and these tyres, it's really easy to lock-up and flat-spot [the tyres].
Trying to get the car turned at low speed is a challenge that a lot of the teams are still going to have to navigate through, so that will be what will guide our development priorities I think.
Coming back to last year, when you were as far behind as we were at this stage, we weren't going to get sniffy about how efficient the downforce was that was going on the car. It was ‘Can we run it?’ ‘Yes, can I have it yesterday?’
Q: How is the new section of circuit going to change the characteristics of Sakhir this year? Will it still be very punishing on the brakes?
JN: It certainly will. Obviously we've run it in simulation. It's quite a tight little section so yes it is going to remain a high-downforce circuit.
I'm not sure that anybody will actually be able to get onto full throttle on the new piece, so it’s going to be quite a high workload section before you get back onto the circuit as was.
I haven't seen a lap time prediction, but it will be one of the longer ones, perhaps the second longest after Spa.
It will be punishing on the brakes and in terms of temperatures, particularly when following in traffic because none of us wants to give away aero efficiency and cooling lightly, so we’ll all be on the edge there.
Q. What is your opinion on the new teams? Do you have any concerns about the safety of potentially large lap time differentials, particularly in the case of HRT which has had no testing? Should anything be done to support them and help their transition?
JN: As a group we have to be supportive in getting new teams off the ground.
I respect greatly what the drivers are saying, and I know one or two have raised concerns about it, but I think that's a matter for the FIA to look at.
We have to try to get as many of these new teams off the ground, running and stable as quickly as possible.
The loss of Honda, Toyota and BMW is disappointing, but I’m excited by the new prospects and I'd like to think that collectively we can [help them settle in].
I wouldn't like to be an MD with my car running for the first time on a grand prix Friday, just in terms of the reliability of the package and how on earth do you dial it in with such limited running and so few tyres. That’s going to be a real handful.
I'm sure that the FIA will look very closely at that and if there are big gaps in closing speeds and plenty of red flags, then they'll take the necessary actions.
But do we want to see them succeed? Yeah, I think it’s important that they do because we don't want another casualty just before the start of the season.