McLaren prove that Mclaren have got it wrong?

Once again one of the biggest stories in F1 is about some teams wanting a return to in-season testing again.

Unsurprisingly, Ferrari is one of the loudest voices calling for it's return, and just as unsurprisingly, McLaren is one of the voices most opposed to it.

Why?: Ferrari has it's own private test track right on its doorstep so it doesn't cost them that much extra to have a car on circuit, and McLaren have invested a massive amount of money in developing the most advanced simulator and simulation technology possible to avoid the cost of having to run cars on track (made even more expensive by not having their own private track).

Now here's McLaren's argument for not having in season testing: McLaren: reintroducing mid-season F1 tests would overstretch teams - F1 news - AUTOSPORT.com

Part of their argument is:

(McLaren managing director) Jonathan Neale believes recent years have proved that in-season testing is not required.

"As we moved out of that and had a greater reliance on simulation, rigs and models and dynos, I haven't noticed Formula 1 becoming unreliable," he argued.

"If anything, the reliability has continued to improve."

all very plausible as reasons for not re-introducing in-season testing.



But hold on a minute! - McLaren have a flaw in their own theory (from: McLaren focused on fixing correlation issues | McLaren | Formula 1 news, live F1 | ESPN.co.uk ) :

McLaren managing director Jonathan Neale says his team's main focus is getting to the bottom of the discrepancies it is seeing between the data from its in-factory simulations and what is actually happening with its car on track.......

So basically, here Neale is saying that the hi-tech simulations that McLaren use are not accurately replicating what the car does on track and is costing the Team in race performance!

That to Me says that if McLaren had more in-season on track testing, they'd be able to get a better understanding of their car a lot quicker!

How many times have we heard teams say that the information that they have from the simulations does not seem to tally up with what is going on on-track?

Surely the only way to get a true understanding of how a car behaves on-track is to have a car on-track?

(Of course - This would require McLaren having to admit that Ferrari were right about a return to on track testing after-all and they're not going to want to do that!)

Simulations can be fantastic tools when they're working correctly, but when they're not working correctly, they can end up costing you $Millions!