How McLaren missteps scuppered three F1 cars and drove away its genius

The matrix. No, not the sci-fi movie franchise which played to diminishing returns around the turn of the century, but an abstruse management system which abided in similarly futuristic environs at the same time as Keanu Reeves et al were raging against the machines on the big screen.

McLaren’s star technical director Adrian Newey disliked the company’s brand new Foster & Partners-designed Technology Centre, feeling it cold and clinical – but he truly despised the so-called ‘matrix management system’ which had been imposed on his technical department. And, unlike the stars of The Matrix, Newey couldn’t warp the space-time continuum and engage in athletic feats of kung fu to escape this dystopia.

The MP4-17 was conceived as the company was preparing to move into its new factory and the first product of the matrix management regime in which Newey toiled increasingly unhappily before reaching for the eject button a couple of years later. For better and for worse this methodology would prevail at McLaren for almost two decades before Andreas Seidl consigned it to the memory hole in 2020.

“A bit of a clumsy design, certainly not one of my best” is how Newey describes the McLaren MP4-17 in his autobiography How To Build A Car. It’s significant that a car which ended up contesting not one but two grand prix seasons should merit little more than a cursory few sentences, less time than Newey spends unpacking the perceived shortcomings of the MTC with its “Orwellian” underground access corridors, its “ordered greyness” and team boss Ron Dennis’s oppressive clear-desk policy.

“Not an environment in which I, among others, found it easy to be creative,” Newey writes with an audible shudder at the memory. “When we first moved in, we weren’t even allowed glasses of water at our desk, and absolutely no tea or coffee or personal effects. Somebody pointed out that it was probably illegal to deny workers water at their desk, so he had to relent on that, but not on the tea or coffee…”

Although the MP4-17’s design phase predated McLaren’s full move from various units in Woking industrial estates to the futuristic ziggurat that is the MTC, its aerodynamics were honed in the new on-site wind tunnel. It’s easy to see how one of the greatest creative engineers in F1 has conflated various events of this era into one hard-packed container of misery.

In mid-2001, as the MP4-17 concept was in its earliest stages, Newey was the subject of a contractual tug-of-war between Jaguar and McLaren. The MP4-16 had been troubled by reliability problems and lack of correlation between wind tunnel research and on-track performance, and engine performance had been pegged back by a ban on aluminium-beryllium. On top of that, engine builder Ilmor Engineering co-founder Paul Morgan was killed when his vintage aeroplane caught a wheel in a rut and overturned after landing.

The MP4-17 was born during a time of uncertainty and fractions at McLaren following Newey's dalliance with leaving for Jaguar

Photo by: Motorsport Images

A certain froideur had developed between Newey and Ron Dennis after their last contract negotiations so it came as little surprise when rumours developed that Newey was being wooed by his old friend Bobby Rahal to move to Jaguar Racing. Having put pen to paper Newey got cold feet as he realised the deadening effect Ford corporate politics would have on the team, and he was persuaded by Dennis that Rahal’s time in the Jaguar hot seat would be short.

While that ultimately proved to be the case, the saga terminally soured relations between Dennis and his star engineer. Matrix management – a ‘flat’ structure with multiple lines of reporting rather than a traditional hierarchy – duly followed. Newey felt it was a punitive wing-clipping exercise which resulted in car design by committee (or, in his words, “an unnecessary and wretchedly unworkable system of department heads and ‘performance creators’”).

As 2001 drew to a close, double world champion Mika Hakkinen embarked upon a one-season ‘sabbatical’ from which he would not return. His replacement, Kimi Raikkonen, was on the face of it a plug-in ‘Fast Finn’ replacement, though certain elements of his outlook on life would not endear him to Dennis in the longer term.

Coulthard’s victory in Monaco would be the high point of an otherwise bruising season in which the MP4-17 was outgunned all round by Ferrari’s dominant F2002, and on power and reliability by the BMW P82 powering Williams’ manifestly less sophisticated FW24

The MP4-17 was clearly an evolution of its predecessor but arrived with a number of aggressive new concepts as part of the package, most noticeably the angled lower front suspension wishbones. ‘Twin keel’ had become a buzzword during the previous season based on the performance of Raikkonen’s Sauber, which featured a radically undercut nose cone to which the lower wishbones mounted via short vertical extensions on each side rather than a single ‘stub’ under the nose. Theoretically this removed a blockage to airflow beneath the nose and onwards to the sidepods and underfloor. Rivals rushed to copy.

At the rear, an even slimmer engine cover and tightly packaged ‘Coke bottle’ alluded to a very different V10 propelling the car. Mercedes had opened the vee angle from 75 to 90 degrees, fashionable at the time but not as extreme as the 110-degree unit in the contemporaneous Renault R202. In theory this enabled a lower centre of gravity as well as an aerodynamically beneficial lower rear ‘deck’, but brought with it rigidity and vibration issues – to the Renault at least.

Mercedes’ reliability problems weren’t as merciless as those which afflicted Renault but the FO 110M proved to be a problem throughout the season. It could rev to and beyond 18,000 rpm but on several occasions Raikkonen and team-mate David Coulthard had to run at reduced revs to head off the threat of blow-ups. There was a learning process, too, with the suspension geometry.

A switch to Michelin meant accommodating the different characteristics of the squarer-shouldered French rubber, which required less aggressive camber. And, as with other teams adopting variations of the twin-keel front end, McLaren found the aerodynamic benefit came with inherent compromise to the stiffness of the wishbones. Having to wait until January 2002 to start evaluating the new tyres on track required the engineers to build a lot of adjustment potential into the initial suspension design, meaning it wouldn’t be fully optimised until later in the year.

The MP4-17 carried a number of aggressive concept designs, but only won once in 2002 at Monaco with Coulthard

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Although Raikkonen finished third in Australia on his maiden appearance for McLaren, helped by Ralf Schumacher eliminating one of the dominant Ferraris in an idiotic first-corner shunt, there were slim returns for the McLaren drivers early in the season. Coulthard collected two podiums before recording the MP4-17’s first win, in Monaco, while Raikkonen suffered the majority of the unreliability (although he authored his own DNF in Monaco). Raikkonen might have won in France but spun out of the lead when he was the first to encounter Allan McNish’s expired Toyota at the hairpin; marshals energetically waving yellow flags were unaware they should be indicating the presence of oil, too.

Coulthard’s victory in Monaco would be the high point of an otherwise bruising season in which the MP4-17 was outgunned all round by Ferrari’s dominant F2002, and on power and reliability by the BMW P82 powering Williams’ manifestly less sophisticated FW24. But the MP4-17 was destined to expand the modest haul of 65 points which left McLaren third to Ferrari and Williams-BMW in 2002.

Believing only a radical new direction would bring McLaren closer to Ferrari, Newey and his fellow ‘performance creators’ spent much of the second half of the 2002 season working on an all-new concept for the 2003 car, the MP4-18. This would be more tightly packaged all round than the MP4-17, feature a new and much narrower nose, a lower and lighter chassis, and a new gearbox with a carbonfibre casing. With a view to introducing the new car for the European season, McLaren also evolved the MP4-17 into a D-spec with revised aerodynamics, new suspension geometry front and rear, and a new gearbox.

In testing, though, the MP4-18’s performance didn’t reflect the numbers coming out of the wind tunnel. The intricacy of its packaging made it hard for the mechanics to work on, it suffered a number of small fires caused by overheating, drivers complained of instability, and there was word, too – never officially confirmed – that it had failed at least one pre-season crash test. As a result its introduction was postponed time and time again, even after Newey and aero chief Peter Prodromou traced the cause of the instability to a disruptive interaction between the front of the chassis, sidepods and bargeboards.

Opinions differed as to the way forward. In his book, Newey states his belief that a new monocoque design was the only rigorous solution, but that he was outvoted by a ‘faction’ including Pat Fry and Paddy Lowe who believed other means of development would render the car competitive. This was probably the tipping point for Newey, who would leave two years later; he claims vindication in the form of the MP4-18 (rebadged as the 19 to spare the engineers’ blushes) performing badly in the first half of the 2004 season until he belatedly got the go-ahead to change the monocoque.

Thus the MP4-17D flew the flag for Woking throughout 2003 and, initially, the decision to persist seemed correct. Coulthard won in Australia and was in with a shot at victory in Malaysia until an electrical problem sidelined him. Raikkonen ‘won’ the Brazilian GP, only to be required to hand the trophy over to Giancarlo Fisichella two weeks later.

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The MP4-18 was plagued by issues and triggered the end of an era

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However, as MP4-18 debugging diverted energy and resources and Ferrari’s new F2003-GA proved dominant from its introduction in Spain onwards, the MP4-17D slipped off the pace.

Friday favourite: Alex Wurz on the McLaren MP4-17D

Engine reliability continued to be problematic; so too did the typically rancid state of F1 politics. The tyre war between Bridgestone and Michelin came to a head after Hungary, when the FIA announced it was to change the way it measured the width of the front tyres – giving Michelin three weeks to design and produce new ones. Ferrari, enjoying virtual exclusivity and a close partnership with Bridgestone, gained a clear advantage.

“All the work done to it wasn’t actually designed to help us close on the leaders. It was intended to help us keep up and not drop back further down the grid” Martin Whitmarsh

As a result, Raikkonen finished second in the drivers’ championship, two points off Michael Schumacher. Coulthard’s less impressive tally meant McLaren finished third again in the constructors’ standings, two points behind Williams. Team management would concede the protracted nature of the MP4-18 project had ultimately proved to be a distraction.

“By Canada it was clear we needed to apply more energy to the MP4-17D to maintain its championship assault,” said chief operating officer Martin Whitmarsh. “All the work done to it wasn’t actually designed to help us close on the leaders. It was intended to help us keep up and not drop
back further down the grid.”

Perhaps the denizens of the matrix management ecosystem should have swallowed Newey’s red pill in the first place…

Race record

Starts: 66   
Wins: 3 
Poles: 2   
Fastest laps: 5  
Podiums: 20   
Championship points: 207  

Specification

Chassis: Carbonfibre monocoque
Suspension: Double wishbones with pushrod-actuated inboard torsion bars
Engine: Naturally aspirated Mercedes FO 110M/FO 110P V10
Engine capacity: 2998cc   
Power: 850bhp @ 18500 rpm  
Gearbox: Seven-speed semi-automatic 
Brakes: Carbon discs front and rear   
Tyres: Michelin 
Weight: 600kg  
Notable drivers: Kimi Raikkonen, David Coulthard

It might not have been a world championship winner, but the MP4-17 still delivered plenty of trophies back to Woking

Photo by: James Mann