Friday favourite: The interim F1 McLaren that unexpectedly challenged Ferrari

For two-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner and long-time Formula 1 tester Alex Wurz, the question of choosing a favourite racing car isn’t dictated by whether he raced or tested it. Instead, it’s something rather more simple that is behind the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association president’s pick of the McLaren MP4-17D, a machine that narrowly missed out on the F1 world championship in 2003 with Kimi Raikkonen.

“I only think, ‘I am driving it to its limits in any condition’ – empty [tanks], light, alone, against competitors,” Wurz says. “And the 17D was just the most balanced and joyful and very fast car to drive.”

The original MP4-17 appeared in 2002, where it along with the rest of the field was blown away by Ferrari’s F2002. The first car to result from the matrix structure implemented by Martin Whitmarsh following Adrian Newey’s near-defection to Jaguar the previous year is described in Newey’s How to build a car autobiography as “a bit of a clumsy design, certainly not one of my best” with victory at Monaco with David Coulthard its sole noteworthy result. There was little to indicate that McLaren would mount a convincing title challenge with an evolved version of the same car in 2003.

Indeed, McLaren believed that a big step was needed to challenge Ferrari and so threw its weight behind Newey’s “ambitious” all-new MP4-18. But although its wind tunnel figures were promising, the infamous machine proved aerodynamically unstable in testing as well as being beset by excessive engine vibrations and cooling issues. Such were its problems that the car was never deemed sufficiently sorted to race, as McLaren instead persisted with the 17D throughout the 2003 campaign.

Wurz, who had joined McLaren as a tester for the 2001 season after losing his seat at Benetton, had a hefty shunt aboard the MP4-18 at Jerez and says it was “the exact opposite” of what made the 17D so special.

“It was the absolute least favourite,” he reflects of a car that formed the basis of the uncompetitive 2004 MP4-19A, “in fact the 18 with a different badge” according to Newey.

“I have respect of speed and I had shunts in my life, but I was never really scared. But the 18 I was scared, because things just kept breaking and you had big shunts.”

The MP4-17's successor never lived up to expectations, forcing McLaren to revert to an updated version of the old car for 2003

Photo by: Lorenzo Bellanca / Motorsport Images

In the knowledge that the new car would not be ready for the start of the season, McLaren had updated the existing MP4-17 to great effect with a new front suspension package, revisions to the aerodynamics and gearbox improvements. It was a car in which Wurz felt totally at home.

“The 17D was a car which was the extension of myself,” he says. “Regardless which circuit and regardless which conditions, it always did what the brain wanted it to.

“I couldn’t wait to drive it because I knew from the out-lap of how to slide it, of how to not slide it, of how to correct it, fast, slow corners. It didn’t matter if it was raining, aquaplaning, it felt like the extension of myself at almost every track.”

Results came quickly on grands prix weekends too as it won both of the first two races of 2003. Coulthard inherited victory in the Australia season opener following a spin for Juan Pablo Montoya’s Williams, before Raikkonen broke his duck in Malaysia by a whopping 39s.

"We have done so many lap records in testing with this car and I was so proud because I was fundamental in the development of this car" Alex Wurz

Either of them could have won in Brazil - Coulthard likely would have done had the race run its course as he made a scheduled stop from the lead shortly before the red flag, while Raikkonen was initially credited with victory despite losing the lead with a minor slip to Giancarlo Fisichella before his Jordan team won its protest.

A weaker than expected start to the season from Ferrari maestro Michael Schumacher meant that Raikkonen headed the points when the circus descended on Montreal for round seven. Whitmarsh would later admit that work on the flawed MP4-18 in the opening third of the season had detracted from the MP4-17D’s ongoing development, which needed to pick up if Raikkonen’s championship challenge against Schumacher and Montoya was to be sustained.

And this did the trick, as Raikkonen remained in the hunt until the final round and ended up just two points shy of Schumacher despite twice having to start from the back with errors in the new one-shot qualifying - he recovered to sixth in Canada after a sudden delamination on the long back straight, but was out when he was unable to avoid the stalled Jaguar of Antonio Pizzonia in Spain - and losing a possible win in Melbourne to a pitlane speeding penalty.

Raikkonen missed out on the 2003 F1 world title by two points with the McLaren MP4/17D

Photo by: Andre Vor / Sutton Images

Another went begging at the Nurburgring, where Raikkonen led until his Mercedes engine let go. Newey cites this as a crucial factor in McLaren’s defeat in his book and puts it down to the technical director of Mercedes’ engine builder Ilmor, Mario Ilien, being “completely overstretched” following the death of partner and managing director Paul Morgan in an aircraft accident.

“The engines suffered as a result, with our performance slipping below Ferrari’s and BMW’s,” Newey wrote. “Worse still, reliability became even more of an issue.”

This tallies with Wurz’s recollection: “They ran out of spare parts for the engines of the 17D,” he says.

Still, the Austrian has fond memories of his time as part of the McLaren testing set-up and isn’t bitter that he never got to reap the rewards of his work on the 17D for himself.

“We tested every week,” says Wurz, who scored his first F1 podium since Silverstone 1997 in his one and only race for McLaren at Imola in 2005 when he subbed for the team’s injured new signing Montoya. “We’ve been all over Europe, even outside Europe at some tests.

“We have done so many lap records in testing with this car and I was so proud because I was fundamental in the development of this car. And it was really my favourite car by a long way.”

Indeed, the MP4-20 he raced to fourth on the road at Imola – prior to Jenson Button’s disqualification from third upon the discovery of his BAR’s illegal secondary fuel tank by scrutineers – was another McLaren to challenge for the title as Raikkonen ultimately lost out to Renault’s Fernando Alonso. But to Wurz, it wasn’t in the same league as the MP4-17D.

“It was a decent car, but it still had its flaws in terms of set-up,“ Wurz says of the MP4-20. “It was temperamental at some circuits; when tyre temperatures were cold it didn’t switch the tyres on well. There were items which were decent, but not as outstanding as the 17D.”

Wurz felt the MP4-20 came close to matching the MP4-17D in his all-time list

Photo by: LAT Photographic

The only car that comes close, he reckons, was the Peugeot 908 LMP1 car with which he won Le Mans for a second time in 2009, 13 years after his breakthrough as a rookie in 1996. Having conducted extensive tyre testing with Michelin, Wurz says “the car and tyre was like one”. It helped too that “the Michelin driving style is completely suited to my natural driving style”.