McLaren

[rev-erend]

F1GTRUeno said:

https://www.mclaren.com/racing/heritage/cars/

Do we read anything into this about selling off the family jewels over the past few years or are they just choosing to highlight the more successful cars they have?

I wonder what Unit 2 currently looks like?

It does not sound like they are selling them..

[ralphrj]

rev-erend said:

F1GTRUeno said:

https://www.mclaren.com/racing/heritage/cars/

Do we read anything into this about selling off the family jewels over the past few years or are they just choosing to highlight the more successful cars they have?

I wonder what Unit 2 currently looks like?

It does not sound like they are selling them..

I think that heritage section could be interpreted both ways - "here are some of our successful cars" and "inquire within for prices".

It is well known that they are selling off the historic cars. The Team has admitted it publicly.

Financial Statements of McLaren Racing Limited for 2018 said:

Managing such a large collection takes significant resource and during 2017 Executive management of the Group made the decision to establish a programme to sell a specific and limited number of these cars to specialist collectors from around the world. Deposits have been received for the cars identified for sale and, while a small number were delivered in 2017, the majority were prepared and delivered through 2018 with the balance to be delivered in 2019. The results for 2018 include profits on sales of heritage cars of £10.0m.

[thegreenhell]

Remember that back in the days when they were allowed spare cars at races and unlimited testing, they often built six or seven cars each year with the drivers racing a few different chassis throughout the season. They could easily sell off several examples of each, yet still maintain a couple of the best examples of each chassis for their own collection. These can be worth a lot of money to collectors these days, especially if it's a Senna or Prost car from a championship-winning season, so why not cash in rather than storing hundreds of unused cars in a dark warehouse?

[belleair302]

Alas many of the 'stored cars' cannot be run because the engines were owned by the manufacturer and certainly during my time at McLaren working in Genesis Park we had all of the F1 cars behind us in storage. Thee was a team of older mechanics who kept the collection alive for Goodwood etc, but there were no spare parts being produced and engines were used sparingly. Honda, Peugeot, Ford, M-B and Renault all take there engines back at the end of a race / season with usually one left in the factory. With seven to eight tubs built a season, barely to the same spec, the major Sponsor had a car (no engine or gearbox), the engine manufacturer had one, Donnington often had one on loan, the factory kept one with engine and gearbox with others just kept under wraps. Post 1994 running a car is massively expensive, getting panels made isn't easy and gearboxes, diffs, wheels, tyres and pads don't come cheap, along with the software to fire them up. Yes you can buy an old Ford Engine but fans want screaming V10's etc. Nobody wants to buy a static chassis and McLaren don't spend a huge amount on these cars, that is management speak for the F1 team is losing millions a month and if we flog off some old cars we may save a little cash. Zac brown bought a Mika Hakkinen Car but I don't think it runs.

[MartG]

I recall reading an article many years ago about a company making a success of making 'replica' ( i.e. non-functional ) race engines for old cars so they could be displayed

[ralphrj]

belleair302 said:

Alas many of the 'stored cars' cannot be run because the engines were owned by the manufacturer and certainly during my time at McLaren working in Genesis Park we had all of the F1 cars behind us in storage. Thee was a team of older mechanics who kept the collection alive for Goodwood etc, but there were no spare parts being produced and engines were used sparingly. Honda, Peugeot, Ford, M-B and Renault all take there engines back at the end of a race / season with usually one left in the factory. With seven to eight tubs built a season, barely to the same spec, the major Sponsor had a car (no engine or gearbox), the engine manufacturer had one, Donnington often had one on loan, the factory kept one with engine and gearbox with others just kept under wraps. Post 1994 running a car is massively expensive, getting panels made isn't easy and gearboxes, diffs, wheels, tyres and pads don't come cheap, along with the software to fire them up. Yes you can buy an old Ford Engine but fans want screaming V10's etc. Nobody wants to buy a static chassis and McLaren don't spend a huge amount on these cars, that is management speak for the F1 team is losing millions a month and if we flog off some old cars we may save a little cash. Zac brown bought a Mika Hakkinen Car but I don't think it runs.

It runs. However, I do wonder if it is converted to use a different engine (Zak Brown also has an interest in Cosworth).

[CoolHands]

So McLaren are doing great (compared with prior years)! Both cars in top 10 in quali in Canada (3 place grid drop for sainz for impeding gasley afterwards). But still pretty good showing

Edited by CoolHands on Sunday 9th June 13:11

[Frimley111R]

CoolHands said:

So McLaren are doing great (compared with prior years)! Both cars in top 10 in quali in Canada (3 place grid drop for sainz for impeding gasley afterwards). But still pretty good showing

Edited by CoolHands on Sunday 9th June 13:11

Yep, good stuff but this may be just one of those tracks that shuffles the order. As we can see with Ferrari on pole. When did McLaren last have 2 cars in Q3?

[Deesee]

Frimley111R said:

Yep, good stuff but this may be just one of those tracks that shuffles the order. As we can see with Ferrari on pole. When did McLaren last have 2 cars in Q3?

Bahrain..

[Car-Matt]

Deesee said:

Bahrain..

Best Q3 result (before pens) since Oz 2014 I think

[ralphrj]

CoolHands said:

So McLaren are doing great (compared with prior years)! Both cars in top 10 in quali in Canada (3 place grid drop for sainz for impeding gasley afterwards). But still pretty good showing

I am of the opinion that this years McLaren is a slippery car designed to be more competitive on the higher speed circuits. It will be interesting to see if it remains as competitive through the European season.

Williams and Racing Point have used a similar philosophy for the design of their cars in the past as it can help you score useful constructor points with above expected performance on the fast tracks. The downside is that whilst it can pay off for you in terms of getting to the top of the midfield it tends to make you less competitive against the teams at the front of the grid (see the huge gap that has opened up between Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull and the rest of the field). Both Williams and Racing Point have abandoned the strategy and tried to build cars that are competitive everywhere only to find that their engineering and/or aero is further off the pace than anticipated.

[MartG]

Increasingly looking like Alonso left F1/McLaren a year too early

[F1GTRUeno]

MartG said:

Increasingly looking like Alonso left F1/McLaren a year too early

Alonso is cursed so take any year where he could've won from his McLaren stint onwards and they'd have won with any other top line driver.

McLaren will probably score an improbable, lucky win this year somehow just to ram that point home.

[Car-Matt]

MartG said:

Increasingly looking like Alonso left F1/McLaren a year too early

I don’t think so, he’s be just as unhappy running round 5th with no chance of winning as last IMO

As for cursed? He hasn’t seemed to be cursed winning WEC champs and LeMans twice.

The problem is F1 is broken and only two teams can win regularly

[exelero]

F1GTRUeno said:

Alonso is cursed so take any year where he could've won from his McLaren stint onwards and they'd have won with any other top line driver.

McLaren will probably score an improbable, lucky win this year somehow just to ram that point home.

Won by Norris so he can Push Verstappen down from the throne

[TheLimla]

Just saw this

https://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/27032068/mcla...

I thought mclaren already had a wind tunnel and that they used their lake for cooling of the tunnel?

[LaurasOtherHalf]

TheLimla said:

Just saw this

https://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/27032068/mcla...

I thought mclaren already had a wind tunnel and that they used their lake for cooling of the tunnel?

The new wider F1 cars don’t fit in most people’s wind tunnels, hence why most use Toyota’s in Germany.

[Car-Matt]

McLaren have used Toyotas wind tunnel for 10 years, their own isn’t full sized

[isaldiri]

LaurasOtherHalf said:

The new wider F1 cars don’t fit in most people’s wind tunnels, hence why most use Toyota’s in Germany.

is it size related or something related to how the wind tunnel reacts under different dynamic conditions? Adrian Newey i think mentioned something about that in his book when talking about the RB wind tunnel.

[mcdjl]

isaldiri said:

is it size related or something related to how the wind tunnel reacts under different dynamic conditions? Adrian Newey i think mentioned something about that in his book when talking about the RB wind tunnel.

My understanding is that while the model might be 1/2 sized, the air isn't and the surface roughness isn't. That means the from is the air is effectively full sized and so the results don't directly scale up. The general effectiveness of a wing can still be seen by the old school methods of using smoke or probing the flow with lasers, but some of the fine detail is lost.
I'm sure I've over simplified that mind you!