Quote:
Originally Posted by Greem
Blimey. I thought one of the points of building and moving to Dennis Towers was so they had their own incredibly fancy super-modern wind tunnel tucked away and it used the lake for cooling & damping?
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It
was an incredibly fancy super-modern wind tunnel when the McLaren Technology Centre was built. In 2004, 19 years ago.
Times move fast in Formula One and in a stroke of Ron Dennis genius the McLaren Technology Centre was designed in such a way that significantly upgrading the wind tunnel was difficult to impossible. I.e., there was no provision for making the working section and therefore the entire ductwork circuit larger.
As you can appreciate, wind tunnels are big! Especially when they now need to have space for a turntable for testing 60% models at up to 15 degrees while not having detrimental blockage effects. Not the case for the smaller 50% models which were tested in a straight-line only back in 2004 (which allowed for smaller working sections).
Over the 10's, McLaren of course did not have the capital to build a new wind tunnel, as capital was prioritised towards the McLaren road car division. The new wind tunnel has now been constructed in a separate, rather more plain and rectangular, building which should make keeping it up to date easier.
PS. The Ferrari wind tunnel lives outside where it can be easily modified. I'm not sure putting a wind tunnel in the middle of an office and workshop building is a good idea by way of comparison:
Even though it was designed by Pat Fry circa 2012, it also has become out-of-date and has recently been upgraded again too.