German Car Forum

McLaren’s Investigation
By Sam Cooper - April 18 2007

After Fernando’s disastorus race in the kingdom of Bahrain, the McLaren team are doing an investigation on to why he was slow, a lighting pod fell on his car, and by his pace, it did some damage.

After the teams dreadful mistake on Fernando’s car, the team will fully strip his car down to try and find exactly went on when the lighting pod in Fernando’s garage hit his car, the lighting pod is likely to weigh around a sixth of the cars weight, about 100kg.

When this hit the car, it is likely to do considerable damage to the car’s very complex aerodynamics, not to mention the safety cell.

This isn’t the first time that this has happened, back in 1999 where world champion Mika Hakkinen drove out of the McLaren garage and brought the roof down on his mechanics, luckily no one was seriously injured.

But how did McLaren look over the matter? The pod fell on the front of the car, this would of caused serious damage to the car, as the pod is likely to have fallen from at least 8 foot or 2.4 meters.

The front suspension is likely to be damaged from such a hit, not to mention the safety cell, the team changed the front wing, but it appears that a broken front wing wasn’t his only problem.

Fernando reported the car to have strange handling during the rest of the weekend, surely if Fernando thought his car was damaged, and there was a risk of him injuring himself or anyone else because of this, they could of got the chassis changed, and adapted Fernando to run the t car, with the same engine, as it would be on grounds of health and safety.

McLaren should be releasing a statement on the matter once they’ve found the problem, when we get it, we’ll let you know about it.

source: SportNetwork.net: McLaren's Investigation (Powered by TotalF1.com)


--------


McLaren May Scrap Alonso's Monocoque
Posted by: MSulka on Apr 18, 2007 - 07:20 AM
Formula 1 News
McLaren May Scrap Alonso's F1 Car


McLaren will strip Fernando Alonso's MP4-22 McLaren car at its Woking factory this week in a bid to get to the bottom of the Spaniard's lack of pace in qualifying and on Sunday at the Bahrain GP.

The reigning double world champion lagged the pace of his rookie teammate Lewis Hamilton at the Sakhir circuit, leaving him fifth at the flag and only jointly leading the drivers' championship.





But according to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo Deportivo, it is possible that an incident in the Mercedes-powered team's garage on Friday night literally put a dent in Alonso's podium ambition.

Although he himself played down the possible effect on his car's speed of the incident at the time, it is true that some parts at the front of the single seater had to be replaced on Saturday morning after a lighting gantry fell from the ceiling of the garage.

'El Mundo' said only the front wing of Alonso's car was changed but it is now thought that the entire monocoque might need to be scrapped prior to the upcoming Spanish GP.

Alonso will also be given two of the three days of the upcoming Barcelona test to get to the bottom of the problem. His impressive rookie Lewis Hamilton will test for only one day, we have learned.

Alonso told La Gazzetta dello Sport: "Maybe a mistake was made while re-assembling the car after that mishap.

"The fact is the car had a strange behaviour from then on."


PaddockTalk.com: McLaren May Scrap Alonso's Monocoque (Powered by TotalF1.com)

wow this would explain alot..and this is a major doo doo by the team..
i hope they can fix it ASAP.. now that they have 4 weeks until the next race..

WOW:

This isn’t the first time that this has happened, back in 1999 where world champion Mika Hakkinen drove out of the McLaren garage and brought the roof down on his mechanics, luckily no one was seriously injured.


That's why they pay people so much, high job risk.

This doesn't take anything away from Heidfeld's move on Alonso!