How McLaren revitalised a hybrid lemon into an F1 history-maker

Out of the gate, the car that would become Formula 1’s first hybrid-powered grand prix winner looked peculiar and was embarrassingly slow. When the MP4-24 pulled out of McLaren’s garage at the Autodromo do Algarve on a wet January morning in 2009, rival engineers rolled their eyes when they clocked it was sporting
an incongruous 2008-spec rear wing – all the more noticeable given the impact of the
sweeping rule changes F1 was adopting.

“The track is so wet we need all the downforce we can get,” explained the team’s chief spin doctor, former GP Racing editor Matt Bishop. Nice try, Bish.

Afterwards, the recently crowned world champion Lewis Hamilton made all the right noises about the feel of the car but the mood within McLaren was downbeat, as reflected by the MP4-24’s disappointing lap times relative to the hotch-potch collection of other machinery in action that day. After further tests at Jerez and Barcelona, and straight line runs at Kemble Airfield, team principal Martin Whitmarsh convened a crisis meeting at McLaren’s Woking HQ to seek a resolution path to the aerodynamic issues plaguing the car.

“I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job,” Whitmarsh admitted, crowning a troubled first two weeks in a job he
had only recently inherited from Ron Dennis, who remained ever-present in his executive chairman role.

Large regulatory changes are often seen as an opportunity for visionary engineers to take great leaps and shake up the running order. 2009 would prove to be a case study in this as McLaren, runner-up by a whisker in the 2008 constructors’ championship and with the ’08 drivers’ champion in car number one, slipped to the tail of the grid. Red Bull, with former McLaren technical director Adrian Newey firmly installed behind the drawing board, had targeted 2009’s
new rule set as a means to vault to the front of the field –
but there was a problem there too…

Within the febrile political make-up of F1 in the late 2000s a fragile consensus had emerged, enough for the competitors to band together in the Formula One Teams Association – ostensibly to lobby for improvements to the spectacle, defend their commercial interests and foster closer ties to the fans, but item one on the body’s agenda was always the ousting of FIA president Max Mosley.

The foundations of the alliance were weak, the consensus vulnerable to F1 ‘ringmaster’ Bernie Ecclestone’s divide-and-rule tactics – and yet, to an extent, the teams would get their way. But not without a great deal of pain.

Photo by: James Mann

Emphasis on developing its 2008 challenger had a severe knock-on effect for the following year as McLaren found itself off the pace

The 2009 technical regulations emerged against a background of rancour over F1’s governance and commercial arrangements (the Concorde Agreement, for instance, had expired at the end of 2007 but a new one was over 18 months
in the making). Though they had been developed in consultation with the teams, via the Overtaking Working
Group committee, the rules arrived half-baked and failed to deliver on the promise of facilitating greater overtaking.
Worse, one team had a massive advantage.

Lack of overtaking had been a perceived weakness in F1 for several years. The 2009 rules proposed to change this by lowering and widening the front wings (after years of trying to slow cars down by fitting narrower and higher front wings, the governing body recognised this made them prone to disruption from the car in front).

Making the rear wings taller and narrower was intended to reduce wake turbulence for following cars, as was the ban on complex bargeboards and other aerodynamic furniture ahead of the sidepods. Straightline speeds would be boosted by adjustable front wing flaps and additional power from a driver-activated Kinetic Energy Recovery System. Another welcome touch: slick tyres again after over a decade on sketchy, graining-prone grooved rubber.

The remaining teams had to
find a way to reverse-engineer the double diffuser design onto their cars in short order, and it was more challenging for some than
others because of baked-in design features in that area

Three of the teams had spotted a loophole in the regulations and had exploits in their back pockets. One of these, Honda, had shelved development of its basket-case 2008 car early to focus on ’09 research in a hugely extravagant programme encompassing three independent aerodynamic research teams feeding in to the principal engineering group.

Though the onset of the global financial crisis pushed the parent company to quit F1 unexpectedly at the end of ’08 (soon to be followed by Toyota and BMW), team principal Ross Brawn, having evaluated several unsuitable suitors – mostly distressed-asset ghouls and other shysters – put together a management buy-out. Whitmarsh, statesmanlike in his FOTA role, facilitated a Mercedes engine supply to keep the renamed Brawn team on the grid. It was a decision he and McLaren would come to regret as Brawn cleared up in the opening races of the season.

The new technical format proved to be a bust. The cars were uglier and the adjustable wings proved useless except to trim out understeer as the tyres wore. And the effect of the 80bhp for 6.7s a lap produced by the KERS was negated by the weight and packaging implications of the technology.

Brawn, along with Toyota and Williams, had exploited the loophole in the wording of the new rules governing the dimensions of the diffuser, adding a second plane fed by a slot. This not only restored the effectiveness of the diffuser in terms of downforce production to around 2008 levels, it was far less prone to ‘stalling’ than a single-plane design constructed within the new limits. What Honda/Brawn then did better than everyone else, including Williams and Toyota, was complement this gain with other aerodynamic furniture, including winglets on the rear brake assemblies and a much more powerful front wing.

Photo by: James Mann

McLaren lost out by not having a double diffuser from the start of the season, as Brawn, Toyota and Williams did

The degree of optimisation on the Brawn BGP001 was such that teams who had simply ‘legalised’ their 2008 designs
and proceeded from there were left at a considerable disadvantage. Although McLaren hadn’t done this – the
MP4-24 was a clean-sheet piece of work, apart from the
engine – it was still struggling to resolve the diffuser-stall
issue. The need to keep on developing the MP4-23 deep into the 2008 championship run-in to keep Hamilton’s title hopes alive had come at a cost of focus on the ’09 project.

Initially, McLaren’s sub-par performance in practice and qualifying for the season opener in Melbourne – both Hamilton and team-mate Heikki Kovalainen achieved lowly grid spots outside the top 10 – was but a sideshow to the developing furore over the legality of the ‘double diffusers’. The spotlight then shifted to Hamilton when he was disqualified for “deliberately misleading” the stewards during an investigation into a late-race incident with Toyota’s Jarno Trulli while the field was neutralised behind the Safety Car.

Mosley never passed up an opportunity to wound Ron Dennis and, as the case headed to the World Motor Sport Council, team manager David Ryan was fired and Dennis announced he was stepping away from the team to focus on McLaren’s new road car business. This pre-emptive mitigation worked: accused of five counts of breaching the International Sporting Code, the team came away with a suspended three-race ban and Hamilton received no further punishment.

As ‘Lie-gate’ slid from the agenda and McLaren knuckled down to fast-tracking developments on the MP4-24, the double-diffuser argument commanded the headlines. To the confusion of most stakeholders the FIA declared the concept legal. Newey’s theory is that this was a punishment measure against Ferrari and McLaren for challenging Mosley’s power; whether you believe this or not, and it’s most certainly plausible, the upshot was that the remaining teams had to
find a way to reverse-engineer the design onto their cars in short order, and it was more challenging for some than
others because of baked-in design features in that area
(such as Red Bull’s pullrod rear suspension).

McLaren managed to get a first iteration ready for
round three, in China, but the MP4-24 remained inconsistent and slow. It had decent mechanical grip and was competitive
in slow corners, while the well-executed KERS gave a
boost advantage over teams who had already removed the
technology or declined to use it entirely. But in high-speed corners an instability persisted.

In readying a completely new floor to be introduced at the mid-season German Grand Prix, McLaren grasped what was only dawning on some rival teams: for all the excitement and controversy surrounding it, the double diffuser wasn’t worth half a second or more of lap time in and of itself. It merely opened the door for other possibilities upstream.

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

Hamilton's title defence got off to a terrible start both from a competitive standpoint and when he was disqualified over giving a false account to stewards

At Hockenheim, then, the team introduced a new and more sophisticated front wing, revised cooling architecture and exhaust piping within redesigned sidepods, and a new engine cover as well as the new floor. Having qualified 19th for the previous race, on home ground at Silverstone, Hamilton started fifth and was making a bid for the lead when he suffered a puncture in contact with Red Bull’s Mark Webber.

The following round, at the Hungaroring, Hamilton went from fourth on the grid to claim the first victory for a KERS-equipped car. While this track’s proliferation of slow-speed corners undoubtedly played to the MP4-24’s pre-existing strengths – mechanical grip and KERS punch – there was more to come in what was proving to be a topsy-turvy season.

After dominating the opening rounds, Brawn’s Jenson Button failed to register another victory after round seven in Turkey, and team-mate Rubens Barrichello contributed just two more as the slimmed-down team fought a rearguard action to maintain its ascendancy in the championship. Red Bull’s RB5, a winner as early as round three in Sebastian Vettel’s hands, emerged as the strongest car in the second half of the season with the revitalised MP4-24 not far behind.

Having stood by the KERS philosophy, removing it for just one round, McLaren pushed back against moves for the whole grid to voluntarily shelve it for 2010. In this it failed

Hamilton set pole in Valencia and finished second, qualified on pole again at Monza, then won from yet another pole in Singapore. He followed that with podiums in Japan and Brazil and might have bagged another from pole in the Abu Dhabi season finale, but for brake problems which eliminated him from the race.

Hamilton had recovered his mojo after an emotionally and competitively bruising start to the season; he would later admit the ‘Lie-gate’ affair had moved him to consider retiring. On the other side of the garage, Kovalainen paid the price for his inability to parlay strong qualifying pace into good results, and he was ‘let go’ in favour of new world champion Jenson Button.

Having stood by the KERS philosophy, removing it for just one round, McLaren pushed back against moves for the whole grid to voluntarily shelve it for 2010. In this it failed. And, though Whitmarsh and FOTA were able to celebrate as Mosley yielded to pressure to end his tenure as president, once this unifying goal had been achieved the teams body began to split under the pressures of its internal rivalries. The season would end with McLaren in the ascendant again – but not for long…

Race record

Starts: 34     
Wins: 2   
Poles: 4     
Fastest laps: 0    
Podiums: 3   
Championship points: 71

Specification

Chassis: Carbon fibre monocoque  
Suspension: Double wishbones with pushrod-actuated inboard torsion bars  
Engine: Naturally aspirated Mercedes FO 108W V8 
Engine capacity: 2398cc     
Power: 810bhp @ 19000 rpm    
Gearbox: Seven-speed semi-automatic   
Brakes: Carbon discs front and rear     
Tyres: Bridgestone   
Weight: 605kg    
Notable drivers: Lewis Hamilton, Heikki Kovalainen

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

McLaren turned its fortunes around in time for Hamilton to win in Hungary and Singapore