Alan Henry : Formula One
Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard crushed the opposition for the second time in a month as their McLaren-Mercedes cars sauntered to an unchallenged one-two in the Brazilian Grand Prix last Sunday.
McLaren’s domination of this second round of the championship, without the benefit of their controversial secondary braking system, was the best response imaginable after days of behind-the-scenes wrangling that began when Ferrari protested against the McLaren-Mercedes system.
The protests were upheld – which flew in the face of opinions offered by the Federation Internationale d’Automobile (FIA) technical delegate Charlie Whiting, who had consistently told McLaren that he believed the system to be legal. The official view was that the main purpose of the system was steering rather than braking.
What is it that has made the team, thus far, unbeatable?
Drivers
The combination of Coulthard and Hakkinen provides an ideal blend of enthusiasm and experience. Both men are seasoned Formula One hands, yet neither has enjoyed enough sustained success to have blunted his appetite for race wins.
“David has a great talent and Mika is supremely fast,” says Jackie Stewart, for whom Coulthard drove in Formula Three and Formula 3000. “It is difficult to judge which will be the most effective over a full season. Mika may be slightly quicker, but David has the consistency. On the other hand, Mika seems to be able to drive any car flat out, whether or not it has a handling imbalance, while David can be a little bit unsettled if the balance is not absolutely spot on.”
There is also a healthy degree of edge between the two men. “They don’t dislike each other,” said Ron Dennis, McLaren’s managing director. “They are very different characters, both team players, both very committed and they both listen to people whose opinions they should listen to, but they have different lifestyles and backgrounds.
“So while they don’t have the level of warmth you can sometimes see between team-mates, they do have a great deal of professional respect.”
Engine
The McLaren MP4/13 is powered by the Mercedes-Benz F0110G V10-cylinder engine which, although based on last year’s F-spec unit, is a completely new engine designed by Mario Ilien and built at Mercedes”s Formula One engine department, Ilmor Engineering, at Brixworth, near Northampton, England.
Ilien set out to create an engine even more compact than its predecessor and achieved a weight reduction of about 5%. Furthermore, he ensured a smooth delivery of the engine’s power through the revs which means that, while the 1998 unit is among the most powerful in Formula One with an output of around 760bhp, it is also very driveable.
Much of the engine’s development has been assisted by the Mercedes headquarters in Stuttgart which has made available additional test beds so that the engines can be run through a series of computer-controlled programmes simulating every Grand Prix circuit on the world championship schedule.
Chassis
Aerodynamics is one of the keys to contemporary Grand Prix car performance. It is also more subject to the laws of diminishing returns than just about any other aspect of the car’s design; the more you push for an additional advantage, the more effort is expended eking out a slight percentage improvement.
McLaren are now benefiting from the design input from the former Williams chief designer Adrian Newey, who switched from the rival Formula One team last August after a protracted legal battle over his contract.
Superb attention to aerodynamic detail -notably distinctively high aerodynamic deflectors behind the rear wheel, the semi-raised nose section and the detailing of the ramp-like diffuser panel beneath the gearbox – is just one element.
This is allied to the gamble of finalising the car’s design and building it at the last possible moment to maximise the time spent analysing wind-tunnel data.
“The regulations governing Grand Prix car design are now so restrictive that a performance edge is not achieved in any one area,” said Patrick Head, the Williams technical director and Newey’s former boss.
“It is all about getting half-a-dozen or so performance variables working well. And McLaren seem to have done a good job there.”
Tyres
McLaren pulled off a major coup by switching from Goodyear to Bridgestone tyres during the off-season. Most Formula One insiders believed that, on the strength of their first year’s performances with several middle-ranking teams, if a top team switched to Bridgestones, success would quickly follow. So it has proved at McLaren.
“But the most important thing about Bridgestone is their seriousness of purpose in Formula One,” says David Richards, the manager of the Benetton team which also made the switch from Goodyear over the winter. “With Goodyear deciding to withdraw from Formula One at the end of 1998, it was important to be with a tyre company whose long-term commitments matched our own. That’s what it is offering.”
Braking system
Late last season it became clear that McLaren were using a secondary braking system which helps its drivers to stabilise the performance of the cars through corners.
By applying additional braking to the inside rear wheel on the exit to a corner, using an additional brake pedal, the drivers are able to moderate wheelspin in a manner originally judged to be perfectly legal by the sport’s governing body, the FIA.
This system also allows the driver to reduce understeer – the tendency for the front wheels to slide away from the apex of a fast corner -by dabbing that same pedal.
Ferrari have been most vocal in their complaints about the system, and their protests were upheld in Sao Paulo, although McLaren still dominated the race.
Build quality
The engineering and build-quality levels at McLaren are among the most rigorous and uncompromising within Formula One. In the early 1980s, much of this initially stemmed from the obsessive perfectionism of Ron Dennis, but it has now permeated much further into the very fabric of the company. McLaren team members believe themselves to be a race apart, standing alongside Williams and Ferrari as Formula One’s absolute elite.
Those same engineering qualities apply to this day, underpinned by meticulous factory preparation, exhaustive testing of individual components and a huge technical back-up at the circuits.