first pic of McLaren Honda

[DasChin]

Honda always used to use white in the 60s through to 80s

would love to see a return to that in some shape.

[007 VXR]

Smollet said:

Blackpuddin said:

Sorry for stirring up a bogus nest of hornets here. Have since heard as above ie that Honda don't want red on the car as it's too closely associated with Schumacher (?) and that the likely final colour will be white or McLaren orange.

Orange would be fantastic but I somehow doubt it. Let's not hope it's not lemon

White and Orange please

[Doink]

Bit of word association, when someone mentions Honda the next word I always think of is Castrol, always associated those two together, but then you have Honda and Repsol too, so, who's supplying the oil to Honda, might give some indication on livery?

[RichB]

Doink said:

Bit of word association, when someone mentions Honda the next word I always think of is Castrol...

I always think of Honda and OK.

[RonJohnson]

Doink said:

Bit of word association, when someone mentions Honda the next word I always think of is Castrol, always associated those two together, but then you have Honda and Repsol too, so, who's supplying the oil to Honda, might give some indication on livery?

Repsol-Honda-McLaren, as with the Repsol-Honda MotoGP team.

All that's needed is a Spanish ex-WDC to be driving to interest the Spanish public...........though given the combination of Spain being on its knees and the current oil price, maybe not.

[MartG]

Doink said:

Bit of word association, when someone mentions Honda the next word I always think of is Castrol, always associated those two together, but then you have Honda and Repsol too, so, who's supplying the oil to Honda, might give some indication on livery?

McLaren have a relationship with Mobil

[Megaflow]

MartG said:

Doink said:

Bit of word association, when someone mentions Honda the next word I always think of is Castrol, always associated those two together, but then you have Honda and Repsol too, so, who's supplying the oil to Honda, might give some indication on livery?

McLaren have a relationship with Mobil

IIRC correctly they came along at the same time as Mercedes, not sure if the two deals were connected or not. Wasn't it Shell before that?

Yep, Google confirms the odd Shell logo on MP4/2 with the TAG engine, and it stayed Shell throughout Honda, Ford and Peugeot. It changed to Mobil in 1995 with the MP4/10 and Mercedes.

Edited by Megaflow on Wednesday 7th January 12:23

[Doink]

Surely they'll need to run with whatever oil the engine was developed to run on much like the fuel

Renault/Total
Ferrari/Shell
Mercedes/PETRONAS

But having said that hasn't McLaren been running the merc engine with Mobil oil and fuel for a while now, would using a different fuel compared to the works Mercedes account for the performance differential between the two, I would imagine it would?

[andyps]

Doink said:

Surely they'll need to run with whatever oil the engine was developed to run on much like the fuel

Renault/Total
Ferrari/Shell
Mercedes/PETRONAS

But having said that hasn't McLaren been running the merc engine with Mobil oil and fuel for a while now, would using a different fuel compared to the works Mercedes account for the performance differential between the two, I would imagine it would?

In answer to your last point, yes. And one of the magazines (Motorsport I think, and I have promised to check for another thread) said that at the start of 2014 it accounted for about 60bhp down on the Petronas fuelled/oiled cars.

[BritishRacinGrin]

I did not know that. Interesting.

Presumably Honda and Mobil have become very good friends over the past couple of years then?

[007 VXR]

andyps said:

Doink said:

Surely they'll need to run with whatever oil the engine was developed to run on much like the fuel

Renault/Total
Ferrari/Shell
Mercedes/PETRONAS

But having said that hasn't McLaren been running the merc engine with Mobil oil and fuel for a while now, would using a different fuel compared to the works Mercedes account for the performance differential between the two, I would imagine it would?

In answer to your last point, yes. And one of the magazines (Motorsport I think, and I have promised to check for another thread) said that at the start of 2014 it accounted for about 60bhp down on the Petronas fuelled/oiled cars.

IIRC thats more to do with turbo placement than oil.

[BritishRacinGrin]

Anyway, the 2014 Mclaren has the same engine as Mercedes all season so they too have split turbos.

I thought it'd been generally accepted that the benefit of the split turbo idea was somewhat marginal, hence Mclaren / Honda knowing about it but deciding to go with a conventional turbo.

[andyps]

andyps said:

In answer to your last point, yes. And one of the magazines (Motorsport I think, and I have promised to check for another thread) said that at the start of 2014 it accounted for about 60bhp down on the Petronas fuelled/oiled cars.

I've just found the quote and I didn't remember quite correctly, it was Mark Hughes in Motorsport magazine who said:

Mark Hughes - Motorsport magazine said:

But it wasn't only the W05's engine. Near-identical units were in the back of the Williams and Force India, after all (McLaren's engine was the same, too, but the team was contracted to run on a fual other than the Petronas around which it had been designed, initially costing as much as 40bhp).

This was in the January issue of the magazine.

[DJRC]

Petronas have a far bigger input into the Merc F1 team and budget than generally known and have done for a cpl of yrs. Indeed the shakeup 2 yrs ago was Petronas inspired/driven. I made a cpl or so of slightly ambiguous posts about it then but couldn't say too much as I was under a reasonably serious job consideration/information with them at the time. Using Petronas gunk is very much vital to the full performance potential of the Merc powertrain so Mac using Mobil and suffering is par for the course.

As a slight aside, they are in some ways very much a parable of F1 for our modern times in so much as they could be argued as the template for the "Bernie" vision as opposed to the European F1 fan. Less than 5 yrs ago Petronas was reasonably unknown in the West/Europe - Petronas Towers outstanding and even that was only just starting to impinge on the consciousness. Sponsorship of the Mercs was their way into Europe and middleish performance for a cpl of yrs with Schuey & Nico didn't really cut it. Two yrs of Nico & Lewis, tv/news exposure and bang - they are known. Two years, a few million quid (yes Im deliberately taking liberties with the word few) later and ALL the up front PR grief/risk taken by Merc, Petronas have executed a perfect PR strategy.

This is the world Bernie sees and its v v v different to the one that fans see.

[Athlon]

PW said:

First picture of the mp4/30

https://twitter.com/mclarenf1/status/5528400308642...

Chassis sticker is not straight and the carbon looks to have a flaw at the right side of the sticker. Tut tut.

[FourWheelDrift]

It passed it's crash testing, probably the one used?

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/117133

[caduceus]

Found this quite interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlnS7OZ9bnU

[MartG]

Jenson's nightmare....

[DanielSan]

Only made worse if Alonso's car looks like this...

[Inertiatic]

Forgotten how fantastic that Brawn looked