Why an era-ending McLaren's pioneering traits couldn't halt Mansell's juggernaut

Time can often soften our perspective, even in the brutally stark win-or-bust world of Formula 1. Take this car. Back at the end of 1992, few within McLaren would have looked on it with a great deal of affection – not least Ayrton Senna.

MP4/7 represented an alarming fall from
grace. It represented failure. The team that had scooped six of the previous eight Formula 1 constructors’ crowns, the past four consecutively, was now firmly on the back foot as a rejuvenated Williams, powered by an increasingly potent Renault V10, soared
into an unchartered, high-tech firmament. Nobody had
a hope of living with Nigel Mansell and his Williams
FW14B in 1992, not even the mighty Senna and his latest Dayglo-and-white missile from Woking.

But 32 years on, MP4/7’s defeat sits less uncomfortably in the context of what else it represents, particularly in terms of important firsts and lasts. It’s the last race-winning McLaren powered by a Honda engine (those from the recent, unhappy era were so far off the team would probably prefer to forget them – something that won’t change in time); the first to feature tech now taken for granted in F1 – semi-automatic gearbox, aerospace-inspired fly-by-wire throttle, electro-hydraulically operated suspension.

And, of course, given
how much he still resonates through our F1 world, this
car will always be one of his. The deity Senna sat here,
calmly fending off a frantic Mansell to equal Graham Hill’s then-record as a five-time winner around Monaco. Oh yes,
this is a significant F1 car – just not in the manner we’d
become used to from McLaren.

But talk about mixed messages. It has been said Honda warned Ron Dennis of its intention to withdraw from F1 long before it dropped the bombshell publicly at Monza in September 1992, but for most within the team it came as a shock.

“It was September before we were aware of it,” confirms Neil Oatley, MP4/7’s chief designer and still today a full-time consultant at McLaren. “Certainly Martin Whitmarsh [long-time lieutenant to McLaren’s chief] wasn’t aware until then. I think, although he may deny it, Ron actually knew quite a bit earlier but was convinced he could encourage Honda to carry on. Obviously that didn’t come to pass and it did create a bit of panic that autumn for the following year.”

Despite its imminent withdrawal, Honda committed to a new V12 engine for 1992

Photo by: James Mann

Yet despite its impending departure, Honda was still working flat out to respond to the gauntlet thrown down
by Renault. It didn’t give up… even as it was in the process of doing precisely that. A year earlier, it had chosen to go from V10 to V12 for the MP4/6, in an attempt to combat the powerplay coming from the French V10. Now once again it committed to the design and development of another new engine. Oatley describes the 1992 V12 as a “completely different one” as Honda fought against the turning tide.

“In those days our skill at assimilating and assessing the power and chassis implications wasn’t nearly as good as it is now,” Oatley explains. “Honda was keen to go for big power numbers. I’m not so sure we wouldn’t have been better staying with the V10 and evolving that from the end of 1990. But the first V12 was fine.

“It was bigger, heavier, used more fuel and required more cooling than the V10, so there were downsides for the chassis. But for 1992 I think they would have been better trying to evolve the engine we had in 1991. There were some good reasons for it, but mainly it was chasing those big power numbers. The opposition, it was felt, were outperforming us but I’m not so sure it was a big difference.”

MP4/7 marked a departure from a production practice dating back to its first carbon-fibre composite design. Instead of being constructed from a ‘male’ mould, the new model was born from a ‘female’

The 60-degree RA121E of 1991 did carry Senna over the line to secure his third, last and arguably most impressive world crown. But the effort to defeat the rising threat from Williams and Mansell perhaps contributed to the new RA122E/B V12, with its widened 75-degree vee, running late. It wasn’t even bench-tested until the December of 1991. The target was 740bhp, up 20bhp on its predecessor – although, as Oatley confirms, it took some time for that number to be achieved.

From pre-season testing in 1992, Dennis was nettled.
He’d seen how strong Williams had become, its FW14B bristling with fully operational active ride suspension –
and it was also reliable. To have any chance of combating
the threat, McLaren had to accelerate hard to introduce its
new car. But the engine delay meant the team was forced to start the season with an updated 1991 car, MP4/6B, which turned out for the opening pair of races in South Africa and Mexico – without a positive return.

At Kyalami, for the first race back in the country since the partial lifting of apartheid, Mansell and team-mate Riccardo Patrese confirmed the worst fears, with an all too easy 1-2. Mansell led every lap and, while Senna kept at bay the new irrepressible force that was Michael Schumacher – starting his first full F1 season with Benetton – the Brazilian was still a depressing 35 seconds down on the winner.

Worse was to come for Senna in Mexico City, where for the second year running he crashed heavily, losing the car over the infamous bumps and hurting himself in a sizeable impact during practice. He did at least
start, but again Mansell
and Patrese were in a race of their own. Senna’s only lasted until lap 11 when
his transmission failed. Meanwhile, Schumacher secured
the first of his 155 podium finishes. MP4/7 couldn’t come soon enough, and it arrived in time
for Senna’s home race in Sao Paulo.

The MP4/6B was trounced by Williams in the early races as Mansell set the tone for a year of dominance

Photo by: LAT Photographic

“The new car had done very little testing before we went to Brazil,” says Oatley.  “Because the first few races went around in one loop, the old cars all went to Brazil on the FOCA shipment, then the new ones went too – so we had six cars in the garage, and I think
we ran all six at various times over that weekend.”

On first contact at a race weekend, Senna was immediately underwhelmed by the new McLaren. He complained of unpredictable handling into fast corners, while there was a sense the new engine offered little more than the old one, despite its pneumatic valve actuation facilitating higher revs.

Meanwhile, Mansell continued to blaze away. He qualified a full two seconds ahead of Senna in third, then that lack of mileage told in the race as the pair of MP4/7s wilted. Gerhard Berger was out after four laps (electrics), Senna after 17 (engine). Schumacher again made the podium.

As Honda pressed on to combat the Renault threat, McLaren went above and beyond to keep up its end of the bargain, through innovation. First up, MP4/7 marked a departure from a production practice dating back to its first carbon-fibre composite design, John Barnard’s original MP4 from 1981. Instead of being constructed from a ‘male’ mould, the new model was born from a ‘female’.

Oatley explains: “The male mould restricted you a little on the freedom of shape. Also we felt the car would be a little bit lighter if we could make a female mould and not have separate body panels creating the aerodynamic shapes. That was the main driving force, and there was a little bit of a fashion factor at play. All
the other cars came from female moulds as well.

“A male-mould car is quite easy to laminate and you can make the chassis quicker than with a female mould, but we felt there were aero advantages going to the other route. I wouldn’t say it was a night-and-day difference, but it was trending.”

Barnard’s Ferrari 640 had ushered in the first semi-auto gearbox back in 1989, and now finally McLaren – which in fairness hadn’t needed the reliability risk given its turn-of-the-decade dominance – introduced its own: a transverse six-speed with the company’s own electro-hydraulic activation devised in partnership with TAG.

The MP4/7 incorporated some significant developments under the skin, including fly-by-wire throttle and a hydraulic-electric semi-auto gearbox

Photo by: James Mann

“We actually built a prototype in 1991 and ran it in practice in Hungary,” says Oatley. “That was just a first attempt, it worked quite well, but had a pneumatic rather than hydraulic system and it wasn’t very reliable, so we felt hydraulics was a better way to go in the future. We put it to one side in 1991 and concentrated on building a hydraulic system incorporated with the engine for 1992.”

The fly-by-wire throttle replaced a throttle cable with a system controlled by electronic sensors, which by monitoring and responding directly to a driver’s pedal inputs empowered the control of engine speeds automatically, and allowed the driver to keep his foot flat to the floor while shifting up and down.

“That was a Honda project, around which the engine was conceived and designed,” says Oatley. “It needed bigger electronic motors and was fairly novel at the time. It really didn’t give too much of a problem, although there was an issue for Ayrton at the car’s first race in Brazil. There was a problem with the control system where he could have almost no throttle or full throttle and not much transition between the two.

"For MP4/7 we used our own control system for the gearbox, piggybacked on to the engine to control the throttle for shifting gear and the two interacted quite well"
Neil Oatley

“He was holding up a big train of cars in the race, much to Schumacher’s anger. But he had full power on the straight so he was able to keep cars behind him even though it was hard to control in the corners. That was really the only problem we had in the whole year, so it worked quite well.”

What about the traction control system?

“It was early days and fairly rudimentary,” Oatley adds. “It was pretty much under Honda’s control because we used their electronics and it was only really in 1993 that we started to use our own electronic systems and that gave us more freedom. That was a bit more of a step change the following year.

“But we had a very good working relationship between ourselves, the drivers and Honda. For MP4/7 we used our own control system for the gearbox, piggybacked onto the engine to control the throttle for shifting gear and the two interacted quite well.”

After Interlagos, the Mansell run continued with further victories in Barcelona and Imola making it five out of five for the Englishman, a new record surpassing Senna’s four from four the previous year. But at Monaco Senna’s luck turned.

Mansell's unscheduled stop for a puncture in Monaco allowed Senna to sneak ahead and score a famous win

Photo by: Sutton Images

Having led from pole until lap 71 of 78, Mansell experienced a big twitch in the tunnel and suspected a puncture. In he came for a tyre change, setting up the famous chase to the chequered flag. Watch it back and you’ll notice there’s no weaving and no nasty chops from Senna. It’s Monaco – he just needs to keep to his line. Even 32 years ago, when F1 car proportions were far more in check than today, overtaking at Monaco was a near-impossibility.

“Monaco does really stand out as the high point of the year,” says Oatley. “OK, it was due to Mansell having a puncture that created that situation at the end, but Ayrton did a fantastic job on fairly well-used tyres to hold him at bay for those last few laps.”

But other wins followed. The Williams ‘slump’ continued in Montreal, where Mansell tripped up at the chicane trying to pass Senna. The FW14B was left prone in the middle of the track on the pit straight facing oncoming traffic.

Mansell sat in the car until a marshal ran out to his aid, then lifted himself from the cockpit just as the field streamed past – at unabated speed despite the yellow flags. The moustachioed Brummie gesticulated his displeasure at the passing Senna, as the marshal risked life and limb. No safety cars back in 1992 –
and to modern eyes it looks so perilous.

Back in the pitlane, Mansell gave his two cents to Dennis on the pitwall, before responding to a TV reporter’s request for comment: “Call himself a world champion? I hope you
saw that on television.” But he was to enjoy a sense of schadenfreude: Senna’s electronics packed up on lap 38, leaving team-mate Berger to inherit a win.

Normal service resumed for Mansell at Magny-Cours, where Schumacher gave notice of much that was to follow over the course of the next two decades when he collided with Senna at the hairpin. Before the restart, Senna – now in civvies – is filmed in earnest conversation with the young German (is that a smirk on his face? Surely not!) and angrily swats away the microphone of a cheeky earwigging reporter. Benetton’s Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds, plus Schumacher’s manager
Willi Weber, hover nervously, perhaps anticipating fisticuffs that never materialise (this time).

High stress for Senna, then. But he did win two more races, in Hungary – where Mansell was confirmed as champion, in August – and at Monza, while Berger picked up another victory in his final race for McLaren, in Adelaide, before he returned to Ferrari.

Wins were scarce for McLaren in 1992, although Senna did beat Mansell in Hungary and again at Monza

Photo by: LAT Photographic

That secured McLaren second in the constructors’ championship, eight points clear of Benetton – but a massive 65 down on Williams. By now, Senna was already touting himself for Frank’s team, sensationally offering himself as team-mate to incoming Alain Prost for free (as if), while a flouncing Mansell prepared to defend his title… in IndyCar. No wonder it’s hardly a year Oatley remembers with particular fondness.

“Obviously the Williams was a pretty accomplished car that year, although Ayrton still won three races - which is not to be sniffed at,” he says. “But most of those were slightly inherited, so there was a lot of frustration, probably more so with the engine rather than the chassis. The Renault was a better engine and Williams had developed an effective active ride system, so they were able to exploit their aerodynamics to a greater extent than we were.

“It was probably only from around the French GP the
engine power was better than the previous year. If we’d kept the previous year’s engine without touching it we’d have been more competitive in those early races. It took a long time to catch up, and it was only towards the end of the year it was performing quite well.

The trouble for MP4/7 is that it was a Marlboro McLaren-Honda that with hindsight marked the start of a downturn that would only properly be addressed five years later

“It wasn’t all bad, it just wasn’t
a guaranteed race winner as previous McLarens had been.
But you’re always learning and evolving when things go
badly as much as when they go well.”

A disaffected ‘wantaway’ Senna… no more Honda… only a Cosworth V8 customer engine for 1993… playing second fiddle to works Ford team Benetton… After so many years of glory, prospects suddenly looked bleak. Little did Oatley and his fellow engineers know that McLaren was about to shine in an unfamiliar underdog role, with an MP4/7 successor now venerated as one of the team’s finest achievements.

PLUS: The rushed McLaren F1 car that elevated a reluctant Senna's legacy

“We were designing the next car not knowing whether it would have a V8, V10 or V12 and it wasn’t until probably late October, beginning of November that the Cosworth deal was signed,” recalls Oatley. “Ayrton wasn’t very committed until a couple of weeks before South Africa [in 1993]. Luckily he was reasonably pleased when he first drove the MP4/8 at Silverstone. He was really struck by the characteristics of
the engine in comparison to the Honda the year before.

“Obviously there was a power difference, but the drivability was so much easier. The last V12 had a lot of friction, so when you lifted off the throttle it felt like you’d stamped on the
brakes because of the engine drag. Whereas, with the
Cosworth, you would come off the throttle and sort of glide
into the corners, enabling the driver to be much more precise in how he handled the car. What you lost in top-end power
you gained in those characteristics.”

McLaren was happy to see the back of its last Honda contender, but things got worse before they improved

Photo by: James Mann

Second in the championship, five race wins and a bunch of memorable Senna moments: there have been plenty of cars in our series with far worse records of achievement. The trouble for MP4/7 is that it was a Marlboro McLaren-Honda that with hindsight marked the start of a downturn that would only properly be addressed five years later, with Ilmor-built Mercedes V10 power, Adrian Newey newly arrived from Williams and a determined equal to Schumacher in the form
of Mika Hakkinen. After MP4/7, F1 fortunes for McLaren would get a lot worse before they got better.

Race record

Starts: 28
Wins: 5
Other podiums: 6
Pole positions: 1
Fastest laps: 2
Championship points: 90

Specification

Chassis: High-modulus carbon fibre/honeycomb monocoque
Suspension: Double wishbones with pushrod-actuated longitudinal inboard coil springs/dampers
Engine: Honda RA122E/B V12
Engine capacity: 3493cc
Power: 740bhp @ 14,500rpm
Gearbox: McLaren semi-automatic transverse six-speed
Brakes: Carbon fibre discs
Tyres: Goodyear
Weight: 506kg
Notable drivers: Ayrton Senna, Gerhard Berger

The MP4/7's modest tally of five wins was a significant reduction on what McLaren had known in previous years

Photo by: James Mann