Track testing McLaren’s latest F1 title winners

Seeing Formula 1 cars on track, particularly in an unusual environment, is always special. And the chance to join McLaren Heritage while it runs three of its grand prix winners at remote Welsh track Pembrey was too good an opportunity to miss as Autosport geared up to celebrate 60 years of the famous British squad.

The day brought together Mika Hakkinen’s 1999 title-winning MP4-14, one of the MP4-23s used by Lewis Hamilton on his way to the 2008 crown, and a victorious MP4-25 driven by Hamilton and Jenson Button in 2010. That means we have McLaren’s two most-recent championship winners, as well as a runner-up.

On hand to drive the cars is ex-sportscar racer Rob Garofall, who has been McLaren’s trusted driver for its impressive array of historic machinery for seven years. He’s driven nearly 80 McLarens so is well-placed to comment on the line-up.

“I’ve driven more McLaren racing cars than anyone in the world, all the eras, from DFV to TAG, Honda V6, V10, V12, Mercedes V10s and V8s,” says the 51-year-old. “Even now I have to pinch myself.”

He’s also surrounded by many of the personnel who worked on the cars in period, which is a boost both from a nostalgia point of view and a pragmatic one. “It’s not just the cars, it’s people like Indy Lall who ran them in the day and you get the stories of what happened,” adds Garofall.

Problem-solving is part of the job as well, for example when a 1992 MP4/7 had a gearbox issue on a previous test: “We’re rediscovering problems and finding solutions – or the people who did the solutions at the time!”

Garofall also enjoys spotting differences between cars that look the same. For example, David Coulthard wanted a third pedal – “a clutch pedal for if it’s spinning” – and a round steering wheel, while Mika Hakkinen had two pedals and a ‘butterfly’ wheel. Hakkinen’s cars, such as the MP4-14 here, also had hooks on pedals for Mika to put his feet into, not that Garofall uses them!

McLaren chief operating officer Piers Thynne and test team manager Indy Lall were on hand for the track test

Photo by: JEP

With the sun out and the track drying, it’s time to get things under way and it’s the 2010 car that’s up first. Thanks to the ban on refuelling and the need for bigger tanks, the car looks a lot longer than the other two. In fact, McLaren’s design was long even compared to its 2010 rivals in an attempt to maximise the diffuser.

It also has simpler aero than the 2008 car following the big rule changes for 2009, complete with a narrow rear wing. “The regs were restricted in terms of floor and aero,” confirms McLaren chief operating officer Piers Thynne, who joined McLaren in 2008.

That’s not to say there wasn’t room for innovation. While McLaren initially missed the double-diffuser ‘trick’ of 2009, it did pioneer the use of the famous F-duct to reduce drag the following year, not that we’ll be needing the soon-banned system today.

The MP4-25 wasn’t quite a match for Red Bull’s RB6 across the season, particularly on bumpy circuits, but it did score five wins (one by our test car, Hamilton leading Button in a 1-2 in Turkey), and McLaren was second in the constructors’ championship.

"It doesn’t matter how many times you do it, it still shocks you. Your brain has to catch up, it’s immense" Rob Garofall

Even on a non-competitive day, one big consideration is the Mercedes 2.4-litre V8, which needs to be carefully monitored before Garofall can be let loose. McLaren has an ongoing heritage programme with Mercedes, and Paul Hodgson is on hand to help with the three Merc-powered machines at Pembrey. It underlines the complexities of these cars that so many people with top-level F1 experience are still needed to run the ‘old’ racers.

“You have to have a great relationship with your engine partner,” adds Thynne. “In terms of testing you either need the original or to emulate it. We want to make sure we can run things forever.”

Where appropriate, that means using modern materials or techniques to replace ageing parts, such as the heat shield on the MP4-25. “We make it look as period,” adds Thynne. “We keep the original stuff but use modern electronics, for example, to make it run.”

Thermal management is important on the later Mercedes engines. They need to be kept in a relatively narrow operating window so there are sometimes fire-ups two to three hours before runs. The engineers control the fire-up and monitor vital signs before handing over to Garofall to take the car out. “It’s going to be mine in a moment,” he says, more calmly than most would manage in similar circumstances.

The Mercedes engines can take up to three hours to prep for a run

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And then he takes it out, running a few flying laps before coming in to hand over to owner and GT racer Mark Radcliffe. As with the rest of the trio, fans are at the ready every time the car comes in to keep them cool, but the performance is still staggering.

“It doesn’t matter how many times you do it, it still shocks you,” says Garofall. “Your brain has to catch up, it’s immense. You realise just how fit the guys are – the forces on your neck under acceleration and lateral G are incredible. And that’s just driving at 80%. We’re nowhere near the capacity of the brakes. Even coming off the power, with the aero you’re on the belts.

“It’s the purest thing to drive because it does what you want it to. There’s not a feeling that comes close. It sounds scary from the outside, but when you’re inside the car and in control it’s not.”

Attention swiftly turns to the MP4-23. It’s smaller and lighter than the 2010 machine, with a similar screaming V8, but what really strike you are the intricate aero flicks and touches all over the place. This car, built later in the season and which took Hamilton to victory in the German and Chinese GPs, even has the ‘dumbo’ wings on the front.

“We pushed the evolution to the bitter end, racing Ferrari,” says Rory Clements, who worked on the car in period and is part of the Pembrey team, of the relentless development around Hamilton. “We hardly saw the race team. If we weren’t circuit testing, we were aero testing.

“Everything changed and it made it harder and harder to get the driver in the cockpit. Because you had the time you filled it.”

Engineering director of the time Paddy Lowe described the “extraordinary” development race in 2008 as “like a war” and reckoned the MP4-23 was more than a second per lap quicker at the end of the season that it had been at the beginning. “Pre-cost cap the quantity of parts that were manufactured was higher,” adds Thynne. “An early-spec MP4-23 looks almost like a different car.”

Ferrari (with eight wins) narrowly pipped McLaren (six successes) to the constructors’ championship but, of course, Hamilton famously secured his first F1 crown on the final lap of the season-closing Brazilian GP.

Hamilton's first F1 world title winner was relentlessly developed in an arms race against Ferrari

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“We watched Lewis evolve as a driver,” adds Clements. “He was obviously already very good but that was the springboard.”

“You’d change a part, perhaps the bargeboard, and they’d look almost identical, but Lewis could tell,” reckons Thynne.

The car is apparently running on wet tyres, but Garofall says that’s not as much of a downer as you might think. “The tyres use dry compound with a wet pattern,” he explains. “It just gives us options if it’s wet.”

Tyre blankets aren’t used for these sorts of runs, so the compound has to be soft. “We can get out and get on and not worry about tyre temperatures,” adds Garofall.

"Even on a short run you can feel the aero difference to the 2010 car. It’s just a lot more sure-footed" Rob Garofall

Sadly, his run is cut short when a gearbox problem becomes apparent, though his mechanical sympathy is on show as Garofall shuts things off early to avoid serious damage.

“There were no nasty noises,” he reports. “That’s what this is about. It’s not run for 10 years and it’s only when you put the car under load you find out.”

It’s a shame, but Garofall has driven Hamilton’s 2008 Brazilian GP chassis and already has things to say about McLaren’s most-recent title winner. “Even on a short run you can feel the aero difference to the 2010 car,” he says. “It’s just a lot more sure-footed.”

It might seem strange to leave the oldest car until last, but it’s fair to say that most people present are waiting for the MP4-14 to burst into life. Aside from the silly grooved tyres F1 used between 1998 and 2008, the car looks right. It’s small and neat, without the complicated aero work on the MP4-23, and seems to be about half the size of a modern F1 monster. It also represents the end of an F1 era.

The MP4-14 represents the end of F1's hand-crafted era

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“It’s the ultimate hand-crafted F1 car,” says Thynne, pointing to parts such as the radiators. “Within a couple of years pretty much everything was machined.”

It’s a similar story with the design – “CAD was not advanced enough to do all the work”, so drawing boards were still part of the MP4-14’s gestation.

The 24-year-old car also requires old 16-bit laptops (as opposed to 32-bit or 64-bit) with MS-DOS to work properly, though work is ongoing to get the same functionality with modern computers. The team always brings at least two old laptops, just in case…

“Modern laptops can be used but for resetting parameters we have to have the original laptop,” says systems engineer Julian Coates, who moved into Heritage three years ago. “I’ve just rebuilt five of them using components from the stock we have. In period they were operated by people who designed the system.” Then it was developed so that “mere mortals” could also run them!

In some respects, the MP4-14 is the most sophisticated car of the three thanks to the use of exotic materials in the engine, such as beryllium, subsequently banned. Being the lightest car here, it has the best power-to-weight ratio. And, of course, it has a three-litre V10 engine. Whether you believe that V10s are simply a high point of F1’s history or something it should be moving back to, there can be no doubt about their appeal. They are awesome.

“All of the cars are incredible, but you can’t beat the V10,” reiterates Garofall. “They’re just angry and aggressive and good. It’s also the car Mika crossed the line with at Suzuka to win the world championship, which makes it extra special.”

Back in 1999 engines were changed constantly – no grid penalties in those days – so they were designed to cover short distances. That means they need to be run sparingly and explains why McLaren likes to use sympathetic drivers such as Garofall. But that doesn’t stop the car sounding incredible as it wails around Pembrey on its own.

Old laptops are required to get the 1999 MP4-14 working

Photo by: JEP

Mercedes engines arrived for 1995 after McLaren’s troubled year with Peugeot, but things did not initially run smoothly.

“To start with it was tough,” says test team manager Lall. “One season we spent six weeks at Estoril with the engines popping left, right and centre.

“But it was a great era. The whole technical side evolved. Mercedes took care of the engine, McLaren took care of the chassis. It was good designers collaborating and Ron Dennis getting the right drivers.”

By 1997 the combination was working well, with Hakkinen and Coulthard on the driving strength. Throw in design genius Adrian Newey, who joined from Williams, and McLaren was ready to win again when the ‘narrow’ F1 cars arrived in 1998. The MP4-13 was the season pacesetter, won nine of the 16 races and both titles, McLaren’s first since 1991.

"The aero is a lot more simple. It’s more mechanical, you can feel what’s going on. There’s more feel, where the 2008 car is more reliant on the aero" Rob Garofall

The MP4-14 was an evolution, but Hakkinen – who speaks to Autosport a few weeks later at the Goodwood Festival of Speed – reckons it was a trickier beast.

“It was an incredibly fast car, a super-quick car,” says the Finn. “But not very nice to drive, comparing it, for example, to the 1998 car, which was beautiful to drive. The first time I drove the 1999 car, I thought, ‘This is going to be difficult’.

“It was very much on edge. There was one more groove [on the front tyres], so it became very difficult to drive. But when you got it right, my God it was quick, scary-quick. The aerodynamics were better, engine better, everything – every little detail a little better.”

Garofall isn’t exploring the limits quite as far today, but he’s going fast enough to stretch the V10’s legs. “It feels much more angry, much more aggressive than the V8s,” he says after his run. “The speed at which the revs climb, it revs so freely. It’s instant.

Garofall, like many others, still favours the V10 engine

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“The aero is a lot more simple. It’s more mechanical, you can feel what’s going on. There’s more feel, where the 2008 car is more reliant on the aero and is planted. You’ve got to be more adventurous with the V8 car to get it to move around. It’s not quite so advanced, it’s not at the level of the 2008 car, though it’s still incredible. But we’re nowhere near the potential of the cars on these shakedowns.”

Of all the McLarens Garofall has driven, he picks out the 1990 title-winning MP4/5B (also a naturally aspirated V10) and Hamilton’s MP4-23 as highlights, but there’s a particular family of cars that stands out: “It’s so hard to decide what order to put them in, but you can’t beat the explosive power and feel of the Mercedes V10s. They were at the cutting edge of what was possible, 20,000rpm [by 2005], crazy.”

So, if he had to race one, what would he go for? “The 2008 car with the V10 engine!” says Garofall. “It’s a massive privilege to work for McLaren and do this. It’s such an honour to get a taste of the cars.”

Depending on your age, McLaren and F1 probably conjures images of M23s from the 1970s or Marlboro machines of its dominant 1980s era as much as it does of silver racers of the 1990s-2000s.

But our Pembrey trio represent some of the most-recent successes many at the team are so eager to emulate in the years to come. And the sight and sound of Hakkinen’s title winner will live long in the memory.

The perfect McLaren car: the MP4-23 but with a V10 engine...

Photo by: JEP