The origins of McLaren-Honda's greatest racer

By:

Gary Watkins

Aug 23, 2017, 7:48 PM

To celebrate the McLaren MP4/4 being voted F1 fans' favourite car, we look back at the all-conquering machine, which famously won all but one race in 1988. Can its origins really be found in the disastrous Brabham BT55?

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There can be no argument with the stats: 15 wins from 16 grands prix, 15 poles, 10 fastest laps and 1003 laps led from a total of 1031 make the 1988 McLaren-Honda MP4/4 the greatest one-season Formula 1 car of all time. Yet there is disagreement, an increasingly bitter one, about who should take credit for the all-conquering design that gave Ayrton Senna his first world title.

F1 design legend Gordon Murray and Steve Nichols, respectively technical director and chief designer at McLaren in the late 1980s, have both been described as the designer of the MP4/4 over the past 23 years. That can't be the case, and in truth the term should probably be given to neither of them. F1 technical directors, then as now, don't usually design racing cars, while Nichols describes himself back then as someone "leading a team of people better than me".

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Gary Watkins

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Gary Watkins has, for reasons best known to himself, devoted all his working life to covering sportscar racing. This season is his 33rd as a motorsport journalist, during which time he has reported on major long-distance events on four continents and approaching 80 24-hour races. He reckons a degree in political philosophy makes him well qualified for covering the sometimes Machiavellian world of international sportscars.

Gary, who also writes for Motor Sport, Autocourse, RACER and others, lives in Surbiton close to the former workshops of the Cooper Formula 1 team but spends more time on the road than at home for most of the year.