NEW MCLAREN IN

[Gt_R]

THE NEW MCLAREN MP4-16...i thought they claimed its totally new??? It looks remarkably like its 2000 car except with a higher nose and a longer sidepod....and not forgeting the NO. 3 on it!

[Gt_R]

i'm sorry for the lack of an image there... i suspect that Ron got his computer experts to stop us from seeing the NUMBER 3! :P

[Dino IV]

And your smilies ...

[Valve Bounce]

Dino, whre's the picture? At which site? I'll check at Autosport tomorrow. Going to bed now.

[Dino IV]

The Pictures available at F1-live.com and Formula1.com are very unclear. Sutton hasn't uploaded them yet.
Here a front overview:


Only thing one can tell from this picture is that the livery is similar to the one we're used to.

[Gt_R]

its terrifyingly hard to identify the differences from this view certainly...

[Dino IV]

Ow the nose ... the nose ... it's ... incredible

Newey is setting new standards in slim shapes for the noses I guess.

Here:


The picture isn't even taken level with the nosecone and even with this picture one can see that the underside of the front part of the nose runs level with the imaginary front axle. And with the upperside running not that high it sets new precedents for the square dimensions of the nose I guess. It's very slim and very neat. Bit needle like. The struts for the front wing are some of the highest around and do I see a dip in the front-wing there in the shade or am I mistaking? Good job, Adrian. Chimney's at the back 'fins' in Jordan style? Smart copying, Adrian.

[Dino IV]

Sorry, no dip in the frontwing. Everyone will be experimenting with that throughout the season so hard to tell what the Albert Park version will be.

[Tris]

Here are some better photos... from Atlas

On track with DC..


Close up of nose.

By far the most elegant solution yet! Puts me in mind of an F16.

I do not like the logo's on the Barge boards though... they have cluttered the livery!

I hope they have kept the exhaughsts that blow though the diffuser! neeeeoowwwmmm!

[marcus]

dont know if its just me or not..but boy that head rest sure is a long way from the air intake behind the drivers head..i know the engine is meant to thrust the driver forward..but thats a bit extreme !!!!

other than that a very nice looking car..pity about the paint job .

[Dino IV]

Cool pictures, Tris. Some more nice details: look at the triangular shape under the nose in to which de lower wishbones are attached. It's a giant splitter this way. How do they keep that thing so slim? Their suspension system must be quite different judging from the thick (read 'strong') 'underchins' some other cars feature for the same purpose.

And what's the thing under the air-intake of the airbox?
It seems there's a silver mini-splitter with a black spot behind it. A second air-intake perhaps? Leading into the airbox as well? Or back to the cockpit for cooling the driver? Or something completely different?

And I was wrong in my previous posting: no Jordan-chimney's but regular ones.

[Tris]

Hey Dino,

I liek your idea about teh splitter and teh box under the air ram for the engine. I think it could well bee for cockpit cooling given the problems that McLaren have had in that area.

The whole front suspension geometry looks radically diffent from the MP4/15.

The front wing looks to be subltely anheaderal too.

The rear of the car looks to be super low too.





(No editing done, just me being silly.-EERO)
[Edited by EERO on 8th February 2001]

[Chrisrb]

perhaps the hole beneath the airbox is for craning the car off the circuit. boy the drivers legs are going to be so high up, is that gonna be comfortable, whats next adrian the driver behind the engine....

[DNQ]

The McLaren really is the best looking car of the field. Very nice colours. Excellent.

[Valve Bounce]

First of all I would like to thank Tris for the great pictures. You can be our official photographer Tris, and Dino can be our librarian/information officer.
I can't figure out how the triangular fin can hold the lower front wishbones. Is it just there to mount the wishbones from both sides, and any force on one side is directly transferred to the other wishbone. I wonder how they will stand up to kerb yumping??
I take back what I posted in the Prost thread - even I can tell the McLaren from any other car. This car is so radical that Colin Chapman would have been stunned.
I just can't stop looking at all these pictures and go back to your posts. This would have been a great chat topic - it would have gone on for hours. Did you guys notice how the body near the cockpit goes slightly lower than the nose? As fo rcooling, why don't they just put a small hole under the nose leading directly into the cockpit? The McLaren was supposed to be the hottest car inside th ecockpit last year. I remember the Lotus used to have no panels at all next to the driver in some of Jim Clark's races. Same with Moss when he raced at Warwick Farm when Sydney was engulfed in a heatwave.

[Tristan]

As I was reading the posts and looking at the pics, my first impressions were, yup, same livery, yup, similar car, yup same weird horney things (which Ferrari have been able to drop), yup, EVOLUTIONARY rather than revolutionary. But as I looked closer I began thinking "what the...."?? As later posts (DinoIV) state, there are some decidedly fishy things on this car that (once again) push this car ahead.

What IS that thing under the nose monocoque?? A splitter?? There?? But why?? Is that a delta front wing or do my eyes decieve me (the on-track shots only)?? The nose may be only marginally higher, but LOOK at the height of the actual monocoque infront of the cabain. Strange that Ferrai and McL have gone COMPLETELY the opposite on this one. Also take a long hard look at the back of the car. I know it's not easy to see in there (and I know very little of the tecnical mechanical stuff) but that too seems v weird, as does the rear wing mount. Is that a strange double diffuser thingey?? I dunno.

Over the past couple of weeks, with all these launches of mighty impressive stuff from lower down the grid it SEEMED that the big two were going to be in some difficulty. However, it APPEARS Newey has moved the goalposts again.... (lets just hope it still makes that GLORIOUS wail!)

[EERO]

This view shows the front wing quite efectively. The delta shape is really not apparent.
The car as a whole looks quite unlike anything else. The highest point seems to be just proud of the cockpit fairing. The bodywork seems to sweep aft in a series of repetitive curves which as my understanding of Aerodynamics goes, is a big faux pas. To violate a known rule, there most be great benefits elsewhere to which I remain ignorant. The low rear deck is remarkable. The space between the bottom of the rear wing and the rear body work seems enourmous. All in all, an intriguing car.

[Valve Bounce]

Aerodynamic rules only apply to fairly simple clean shapes. Once we have an open wheeler with all sorts of open suspension components, open cockpits, air intakes, exhaust stacks, brakes, engine and gearbox etc, then aerodynamic rules no longer apply and the whole aerodynamics are governed by a miriad of boundary conditions which are very complicated. I suspect these would be impossible to calculate even using computers. Therefore the obvious approach is to forget rules, and look to wind tunnel tests. These wind tunnels are very sophisticated these days using smoke trails to determine how the air flows. They obviously have ways of measuring aerodynamic drag as well. In all the above, how the down force is generated is very important as this is affected by the aerodynamics of the rest of the car, and I am sure this is measured as well. The whole lot is greatly affected by the velocity of the upper surface of the tyres which at any one time is moving at twice the speed of the car.
I know this sounds like a helluva lot of bull, because it sounds like a lot of bull to me!! The lower rear wing appears to act as a pure wing whereas the upper rear wing probably acts as a deflector as well as a wing.
I love those pictures, guys, so many thanks to all of you.

[Dino IV]

My suggestion the additional air-intake was for cockpit cooling was a bit of a long shot a really unlikely. It's probably either connected to the airbox as well or it's used for additional cooling like for the electronics or something.

The aerodynamics inside the car are getting more and more important - i.e. the chimneys - so maybe it's just used to create some kind of underbody (little) over-pressure or something. Just guessing though.

[Airhead]

Did you see the Thunder Birds extras that were masquerading as drivers pulling the cover off the car half way up the page?

I can see it now...

"Scott"
"Yes Virgil"
"One of my bits of string is stuck on this cover here"
"Yes Virgil"
"How come we got taken out of the cupboard Virgil?"
"You don't mean we've been outed Scott?"
"Don't answer a question with a question Virgil, and this is getting like the infamous post in the Gravel Trap"
"What's the other fellas name, he looks new"

[Toth]

I would just like to say that I still hate McLarens paintjob but the nose looks brilliant. With the red and the shape it's the most beautifull nose (of a car) I've seen this year. I now award McLaren a 6 for estheticness and stuff of the paint, wich is 2 points more than last year. Way to go!

[Speed]

The red paint at the nose, is the "Ferrari Touch"

[Minardi fan]

I like the chassis a great deal, but the paint job is just so boring.

[downforce]

Funny how Ferrari and Mclaren have swapped looks for '01...dyu s'pose Newey waited to see the F2001 nose cone?

If thats the case it'll flop, bigtime.

However, intriguing car it is...but the F2001 looks far better...