Craig Scarborough explains McLaren's new rear suspension

[John S]

Once Red Bull had mythical wings. now its Macca's turn. 

[Cam]

Typical Craig Scarborough, he doesn't actually explain anything.

As with most technical commentary on F1, the expression " the blind leading the blind" is most apt.

[PG_Gabriel]

The basic principal is at low speed the car has a lot less downforce, so the car is running a fairly high ride height because there is little downforce pushing it towards the ground. Because of the higher ride height these special wishbones are close to touching the floor of the car. Something about the shape of these wishbones creates low pressure (downforce.)

When the car gets up to speed, the downforce acting on the car pushes the chassis towards the ground (lowering ride height.) This creates a gap between the special wishbones and the floor of the car, ruining the low pressure, and decreasing drag. Thus increasing top speed.

Basically McLaren is getting loads of downforce from it at low speed, but very little drag at high speed.

[lkjohnson1950]

One part he got all wrong, these are not shrouds on the wishbone, the reason they are legal is because they are the wishbones. And the difficulty for other teams is that they are reversed from normal requiring the entire rear suspension to be redesigned to use them.

[Scott]

Sounds ingenious.  I like it - I just wish Williams or Sauber had thought of it.

[lkjohnson1950]

Williams says it would be easy to copy, but they're the only ones who think so. Everyone else says it would take a major redesign of the rear suspension.

[John S]

Williams says it would be easy to copy, but they're the only ones who think so. Everyone else says it would take a major redesign of the rear suspension.

Or maybe Pat Symonds understands exactly what Macca is doing as he tried something similar but thought he'd not get it past Charlie.
 Remember a lot of Renault advancements, when he was there, got swiftly banned by the FIA, mass dampers anyone?