Tech Analysis: McLaren MP4-22

In many respects, McLaren have led the trend in car design over the past few years. For the last two seasons McLaren have raced a car that includes most of the technical developments other teams have only just incorporated this year, items such as carbon gear cases, seamless shifts, deeply undercut sidepods and zero keels. Thus it seems that looks alone cannot be the judge of a race car.

McLaren were successful during the no tyre change season of 2005, but were let down by reliability and the pace of development by Renault. Last year the team struggled with tyres, aerodynamic stability and, again, their Achilles heel, reliability, and ended the season win-less.

During this time McLaren has seen some of their key technical staff leave the team, starting with Adrian Newey, who switched to Red Bull and as soon joined by several senior staff. Other staff left for other teams but, despite this, McLaren are far from unstable at the top level of technicians as Paddy Lowe, Mike Coughlan and Pat Fry are still resident and are steering the design team.

McLaren's sidepods sport clever pod wings merged into the chimneys and two supports for the rear wing © LAT (Click image to enlarge)

With the lack of technical rule changes affecting the appearance of the car - and bearing in mind the existing layout of the car - McLaren's 2007 challenger at first appears little changed from the MP4-21. Clearly as a logical development of the recent line of McLarens, the car's development is focused much more on detail than major changes.

The team enjoyed the luxury of starting development much earlier than most of their rivals and thought has been applied to every area of the car, leading to some surprisingly innovative detail work.

McLaren took the unusual step of unveiling the MP4-22 complete with its new front wing, rather than attaching an older-spec for the launch event and the design bears the team's usual format of a three element wing with smooth curves.

Rather uniquely, however, the new design mounts the wing to the nose via the middle of the three elements. Such is the size of the wing, this mounting probably takes the loads more evenly from the wing rather than feeding the loads forwards through the wing to the usual mounts at the front of the wing.

Another break from the norm comes with the car's sidepods, which do not feature a shape permanently moulded to the chassis but instead use a multi-part engine cover to form the entire aerodynamic shape. This makes it easier for McLaren to alter the shape without affecting their crash test results.

Additionally McLaren have adopted a slight variation to the pod wings on the shoulders of the sidepods. These are set further back than most teams' designs and as result they are merged into the chimneys. This is a neat solution as the fins aim to the split the dirty flow from the front wheels from the flow over the sidepods, which is also a function the chimneys serve.

The diffuser features two new ducts (yellow) set above the side channels to beat the maximum height regulations © Scarborough (Click image to enlarge)

The sidepods drop away and inwards quite markedly, leaving the bodywork to bulge where it covers the engine and gearbox, the top of the gearbox area being particularly neat as it forms a flat deck ahead of the rear wing. To improve airflow in this area is an exceptionally large cross section rear upper wishbone - where the wishbone meets the gearbox the cross section stretches to three times the rest of the wishbone.

Judging by the heat sensor strips attached to the part, this is subject to the flow from the exhaust and leads the flow towards the top of the diffuser and beam wing. Making a nod towards trends established last season, McLaren have mounted the rear wing on two posts.

The diffuser has undergone a significant change, the central tunnel is much more aggressive and the side channels are supplemented by some unusual ducts that are mounted above them. These appear to be a workaround the maximum height rule from 2005, as a false diffuser roof exists in the normal area, which splits the usual side channel from the new upper duct.

This design effectively regains McLaren the lost diffuser performance from the limited height allowed to the side of the diffuser - but how this extreme interpretation of the rules is viewed by the other teams and the FIA remains to be seen.

Although the way the car looks externally is no judge, the thought McLaren have applied to the car bodes well for its ultimate speed. It just leaves their ability to keep the car and engine running reliably over the two days of the race distance to decide how successful they can be in 2007.