Why McLaren's F1 concept car should be taken seriously

This week McLaren released its vision of what the future of Formula 1 could be with its MP4-X concept car.

The resulting vehicle is a mix of the plausible and several far wackier ideas. This goes to show the MP4-X is not just a styling or PR exercise, but a serious stab at possible future directions.

By taking ideas from its technological arm McLaren Applied Technologies and its race team, McLaren has "combined a number of F1's key ingredients - speed, excitement and performance, with the sport's emerging narratives - such as enclosed cockpits to enhance driver safety, and hybrid power technologies".

The result is a car that is clearly F1-related, with a long, slim, chassis, wings and wide-spaced wheels. But the MP4-X also embraces the more controversial idea of enclosing the wheels and cockpit.

McLaren has then applied emerging and conceptual technologies to meet the myriad other technical needs in and around the car.

It's clear McLaren is challenging the preconceptions of what many think make up an F1 car, so the concept has an enclosed cockpit, closed wheels and an increased amount of electrical drive.

For many followers of F1, discarding these open cockpits and open wheels is sacrilegious, but there are good reasons that such a direction could make sense in the future.

As F1 strives to be a relevant and sustainable sport in a changing world where the environment is a major consideration, simply burning fossil fuels to gain performance isn't going to be tolerated.

Already F1 is ERS-focused, but the new concept uses even more energy recovery to power an electric drive, adopting clever ideas such as batteries integrated into the structures, and solar panels. McLaren's idea has these concepts mated to a super-efficient downsized internal combustion engine.

A boost in electrical energy could be provided by a 'charging lane' in the track, transferring energy to the car's batteries via induction as the driver passes over the special lane.

Given this step towards a super-efficient drive train, the car's chassis design must also consider efficiency. Much of an F1 car's drag comes from its open wheels - along the straights a large proportion of its power is used to fight against the air resistance they encounter.

Enclosing them into wheel pods makes a lot sense, and the inner wheel fairings last seen in F1 in 2009 also reduce aero drag.

Downforce would be created largely from ground effect, with the car featuring large underbody tunnels, using space freed up by the reconfigured drive train. The external wings, which appear to be made into smaller, simpler conceptualised shapes, will feature moveable technology - from physical movement to morphing panels and the use of electrical plasma - to turn the air.

With such a plethora of aero aids, the car would be weighted with downforce, making it fast around turns, but the closed design and adaptive aero would make it equally potent along the straights.

Ferrari released its own Formula 1 concept car images earlier this year

It may be the case it's been overdone with the MP4-X, so the resulting performance could be a safety issue.

A closed cockpit has aero advantages, but most importantly the safety benefits are obvious, and McLaren has given thought to the driver exiting the cockpit in their design.

The cockpit itself features some far-fetched ideas, with no manual controls, but neural links to the driver's brain to control the car, intelligent race suits, holographic dash displays and driver telemetry. But equally the closed cockpit allows some clever in-car cameras to provide a driver's point of view on TV, which would enhance the experience for those tuning in to the race.

With a very different design outlook, the actual make-up of the materials could be equally advanced. McLaren suggests materials that have the ability regain their shape after accident damage, as well as the aforementioned batteries being incorporated into the car's primary structure.

What may seem far-fetched is the suggestion that the chassis could have self-diagnosing damage systems, but this is already adopted in aircraft airframes with acoustic detection.

Enclosing the chassis, the bodywork would not have sponsor stickers attached, but digital panels enabling the sponsor logos to change while the car is in motion. The wheel pods enclosing the wheels allow for better placement of tyre sensors, perhaps not only reading temperatures but also wear and tyre integrity, to predict ideal pit stop points and warn of tyre failure.

This is the third futuristic F1 concept to come via a team, since Red Bull and Ferrari have released ideas taking similar visual approaches. But it could be argued that McLaren's is the most thoroughly conceptualised idea and in some areas the most plausible.

Certainly the base aero, drivetrain and structure concepts are realistic approaches, albeit with major changes required in the rules and preconceptions of what an F1 car should be. And some of the advanced technologies - which seem crazy at first - are realistic and could be incorporated as the technology matures.

Beyond those ideas, the wilder technologies aren't likely to be in any sort of likely F1 roadmap, so perhaps the purpose of including those is solely to provoke some deeper thought and grab some attention.

But the MP4-X goes to show how far road and racecar technology will go in the coming decades. Even the basic paradigm of how a car is driven, if driven by a driver at all, could be challenged with the advanced rate of technological development.

Currently F1 doesn't have this sort of medium/long term technological road map, and even the rules being planned for the short-term are simple iterations of the current regulations. Perhaps F1 needs to have this sort of thinking to set itself a direction for the middle of the 21st century, to keep pace with a rapidly changing world?