Tech notes: Analysing McLaren's MP4-27

McLaren became the second Formula 1 team to unveil its car on Tuesday, when the covers came off the MP4-27 at its factory in Woking.

Although we have already caught our first glimpse of a 2012 machine through Caterham's renders in F1 Racing last week, there was much interest in the McLaren launch because it was going to be the first of the top teams to show us how the new rules affect the look of the cars.

The MP4-27 is not a radical departure from the team's previous challengers and the team does not appear to have adopted an aggressive approach to the new rules. However, the car is a very tidy and logical development of the team's 2011 car.

Immediately it is apparent that McLaren has taken a different direction to Caterham with its treatment of the nose. McLaren has over the past few seasons gone for a relatively low nose, and the new car duly follows this principle. The detachable nose cone is able to sit below the 55cm maximum height that the rules allow without an ugly step.

McLaren's technical director Paddy Lowe explained that this approach places the mass of the nose lower and enables it to fit its preferred front suspension geometry.

While the nose concept is carried over from 2011, the distinctive "U" shaped sidepods of the MP4-26 have been dropped. Rather than the angled sidepod inlets, that formed a channel along the top of the sidepod, the sidepods now sport a wide and high inlet.

This allows a large undercut beneath the radiators, to feed air to the rear of the car. Again Lowe explains that McLaren's desire for a slim rear end and top central cooling outlet made it hard to package the "U" sidepod.

In fact, it is the new rules on exhausts that have created the strangest add-on to the MP4-27 - the exhaust bulge. Exhausts must now exit at least 20cm above the floor, and the final 10cm of exhaust is defined in terms of the angle it can point upward at.

McLaren has chosen to place the exhaust as low and far from the car's centreline as possible, and then angled it steeply upwards to point towards the rear wing. It is possible that this design will help create a blown rear wing, bringing a useful gain in downforce when so much grip has been lost from the banning of exhaust blown diffusers.

Lowe confirmed the exhaust fairing and its outlet position will be changed, as different ideas are tried in testing.

Other details are new mirrors for better rearward visibility, revised cooling around the roll hoop for the gearbox and KERS. There is also a new set of wheels, featuring a series of drilled holes around the rim which, when allied to the ring shaped fairings (missing at the launch), will aid brake cooling.

The car will undergo straight-line tests at the hands of Oliver Turvey over the weekend, before making its public testing debut in Jerez next week.

Check out our video animation showing what you can expect from Formula 1's 2012 designs here