The West McLaren Mercedes Benz team had a “sneak preview” of its new 1997 car at its factory in Woking early on the morning of January 14. The prototype McLaren-Mercedes MP4-12 was unveiled in an orange and black livery – the color used on the old McLaren CanAm cars of the 1960s – but will be raced in a silver color-scheme that year. Silver is, of course, the traditional racing livery of Mercedes-Benz, but it is also the color used by the Germany West cigarette brand – the team’s new title sponsor – for its West Lights packaging. This replaced the team’s 23-year association with Marlboro.
The team wanted to get as much testing achieved as possible and so the McLaren sponsorship package will be revealed separately at a major launch in London’s Alexandra Palace exhibition center on February 14, with an all-star cast and live stage performances by the Spice Girls and Jamiroquai.
Immediately after the technical launch the MP4-12 was loaded into a specially-chartered Iluyshin cargo plane and flown straight to Jerez de la Frontera in southern Spain where David Coulthard was due to begin testing the following day. Unfortunately the Scotsman was only able to complete a couple of corners of the Jerez track before grinding to a halt with a fuel pump problem. This was fixed overnight and the following day the test team was able to get down to some serious work with Mika Hakkinen – despite a second fuel pump problem.
The fact that the first car was not completed until six o’clock on the morning of its launch – and was flown to Jerez for testing barely four hours after the event – gives some indication how comprehensively new this McLaren really was. It incorporated a number of technical innovations now required by new F1 regulations – including a rear crumple zone and collapsible steering column, reduced winglet area and suspension components of restricted depth-to-width ratio – and after every single component had been put under the microscope, 90 per cent of them were new or redesigned.
The MP4-12 has been designed and built by the same group of engineers who have worked on all the recent McLarens although prior to design work beginning on the car McLaren carried out an internal analysis of its individual departments involved in the F1 project – which now employs around 275 people not including electronics engineers, TAG Electronics (which now supplies 40% of the F1 field) has another 110 staff, some of whom work with McLaren. The aim was to find ways in which to improve every part of the organization to ensure more efficiency in all aspects of design, production and engineering. This was followed by some restructuring.
The design work was carried out by a team of engineers headed by Neil Oatley, the team’s chief designer. Matthew Jeffreys was once again responsible for the design of the chassis (a position he has held since 1990). David North was project leader for the design of the transmission. David Neilson headed the suspension design team and former Cosworth engineer Mark Ingham (who joined McLaren in 1995 from Peugeot Sport) was in charge of the engine installation.
The aerodynamic work was conducted by Henri Durand, the head of the company’s aerodynamics, although project aerodynamicists on the MP4-12 were Phil Adey and Peter Prodromou. The team continues to use the British government-owned National Physical Laboratory windtunnel in Teddington, Middlesex – which McLaren engineers recently upgraded to 40% scale with a high-speed rolling road. The team does intend to build its own windtunnel – there may even be two windtunnels – when (and if) its gets planning permission for its new headquarters which it hopes to be allowed to build on a farm it bought 18 months ago at Fairoaks, to the north of Woking.
The design philosophy of the car was to analyse every single component with the aim of reducing weight and lowering the centre of gravity of the car. In order to achieve this 90% of the parts had to be redesigned. The Mercedes-Benz FO110E, designed and built for the German car company by Ilmor Engineering of Brixworth, follows similar development lines. It retains the same basic architecture but features a new sand-cast aluminium alloy block and different internals components. It weighs in at 124kgs which is 4kgs heavier than last year’s engine, but around the same as the Ferrari V10. It is the same length as the 1996 engine but is 24mm wider and 17mm lower. This means that the centre of gravity been lowered.
This has meant that the rear end aerodynamics have been substantially altered to take into account the new regulations for the rear impact zone and the reduced winglet area. The result is a newly-packaged longitudinal semi-automatic six-speed transmission and a rear suspension which features further use of composite parts. The result of all this work is a very neat and well thought-out rear with the weight very low indeed in the chassis.
The front end of the car has also been reworked considerably. The raised nose of the MP4/11 has been lowered to improve the airflow to the rear of the car and try to make up for some of the aerodynamic losses caused by the banning of rear winglets. The team continues to use advanced computational fluid dynamics software and has made major alterations to the internal air-flow of the car in an effort to improve the cooling efficiency.
The design team paid particular attention to creating a car which will be as “user-friendly” as possible for the McLaren race mechanics and in the Jerez testing the testing team was able to change one of the new V10s in just under an hour – despite having no real experience with the car. This will be a bonus for the team at races because practice time and the use of spare cars is severely restricted.
The McLaren MP4/12 was the car with which the McLaren Formula One team contested the 1997 Formula One season. It was driven by Mika Häkkinen and David Coulthard. The car proved extremely promising and could have won at least seven races during the course of the season, but reliability proved troublesome, in particular that of the engine.In pre-season testing the efforts were rewarded when Coulthard won the first race of the season, in Australia with Hakkinen finishing third. Though this was undoubtedly made slightly easier by the retirement of both Williams FW19s, the young Scot drove a cool race despite being under mounting pressure from Micheal Schumacher’s Ferrari. It was a fabulous result for the new West McLaren Mercedes team first time out.
With a new F-spec version of the Mercedes-Benz engine, the cars were by this time enjoying a field-leading 740bhp at 16,000rpm, but even this proved insufficient to push McLaren’s tally of wins for the season beyond three. This proved frustrating, especially after Coulthard won the first race of the season in Australia, McLaren’s first win since losing Ayrton Senna. The situation was exacerbated by Häkkinen retiring from three further races whilst in the lead – all from engine failures – including at the Nürburgring, where the team lost a comfortable one-two finish when both cars retired with identical failures within a lap of each other.
Coulthard also lost a certain victory – at Montreal, with a clutch problem after a precautionary pitstop just a few laps before the race prematurely ended. However, Coulthard also won a superb race at Monza even though he was again concerned by the car’s rear-end stability during much of the season.
The team finally claimed the reward of a one-two finish at the season finale after the collision between Michael Schumacher and Jacques Villeneuve, although it was a contentious finish with many nodding to the fact that Patrick Head of Williams and Ron Dennis of McLaren had negotiations where Villeneuve would give up the lead if the McLarens made sure to steer clear from the troubled Williams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmQXwMQCFik
Regardless, this was Häkkinen’s first win in F1 and was much celebrated by the F1 world which had been tipping him to win since he first outqualified Senna at Portugal in 1993.
Among other Formula One spectators, F1 Racing photographer Darren Heath had noticed the rear brakes on the McLarens glowing during acceleration zones of the A1-Ring in Austria, just one week prior to the GP of Luxembourg. Posted up within striking distance of where the McLarens ceased, Heath made his way over to Hakkinen’s car and captured photos of the MP4/12 pedal assembly. McLaren’s secret had been discovered.
Review of the developed film revealed a second brake pedal. This gave the driver the ability to manipulate either of the rear brakes independently of the others, eliminating understeer as well as wheel spin when exiting corners. The system was dubbed “brake steer”. Ron Dennis was furious to hear the brilliant system had been exposed only a short week after the Brake Steer system had been put into service.
The system would later be banned in the following season at the 1998 Brazilian Grand Prix, thanks to Ferrari’s protestations to the FIA.
Elsewhere, McLaren’s trademark resourcefulness demonstrated itself when it came to refuelling and pit strategies so that, at Buenos Aires, for example, where the car’s harder compound tyres were not best suited, a one-stop strategy enabled Hakkinen to move from 17th to fifth place by the flag. Similar manoeuvring was on target to take the Finn to second place at Silverstone, where Coulthard was dogged by brake trouble, until his engine failed six laps from the end.
The results of these improvements were not overwhelming but they were at least now making themselves felt even if nothing in 1997 could quite eclipse the latest Williams Renault. What mattered was that McLaren was once a ‘establishing itself as a Grand Prix winner. With resources already being poured into the following year’s effort, as the team directed much of its testing effort towards detailed preparation for the new era of narrow-track, grooved-tyre F1 cars, McLaren was very clearly back on track to become the pacesetter.
The team eventually finished fourth in the Constructors’ Championship, with 63 points.
McLaren later designed a road-car that shared a similar designation to the MP4/12: the McLaren MP4-12C, which also featured the “brake steer” system.
8. The C111 design study was originally baptized , the C101 project. However, the “0 (zero)” in the middle had to disappear , since this number combination has long been protected by....
Dec 16 2014
1997 McLaren Mercedes MP4/12
The West McLaren Mercedes Benz team had a “sneak preview” of its new 1997 car at its factory in Woking early on the morning of January 14. The prototype McLaren-Mercedes MP4-12 was unveiled in an orange and black livery – the color used on the old McLaren CanAm cars of the 1960s – but will be raced in a silver color-scheme that year. Silver is, of course, the traditional racing livery of Mercedes-Benz, but it is also the color used by the Germany West cigarette brand – the team’s new title sponsor – for its West Lights packaging. This replaced the team’s 23-year association with Marlboro.
The team wanted to get as much testing achieved as possible and so the McLaren sponsorship package will be revealed separately at a major launch in London’s Alexandra Palace exhibition center on February 14, with an all-star cast and live stage performances by the Spice Girls and Jamiroquai.
Immediately after the technical launch the MP4-12 was loaded into a specially-chartered Iluyshin cargo plane and flown straight to Jerez de la Frontera in southern Spain where David Coulthard was due to begin testing the following day. Unfortunately the Scotsman was only able to complete a couple of corners of the Jerez track before grinding to a halt with a fuel pump problem. This was fixed overnight and the following day the test team was able to get down to some serious work with Mika Hakkinen – despite a second fuel pump problem.
The fact that the first car was not completed until six o’clock on the morning of its launch – and was flown to Jerez for testing barely four hours after the event – gives some indication how comprehensively new this McLaren really was. It incorporated a number of technical innovations now required by new F1 regulations – including a rear crumple zone and collapsible steering column, reduced winglet area and suspension components of restricted depth-to-width ratio – and after every single component had been put under the microscope, 90 per cent of them were new or redesigned.
The MP4-12 has been designed and built by the same group of engineers who have worked on all the recent McLarens although prior to design work beginning on the car McLaren carried out an internal analysis of its individual departments involved in the F1 project – which now employs around 275 people not including electronics engineers, TAG Electronics (which now supplies 40% of the F1 field) has another 110 staff, some of whom work with McLaren. The aim was to find ways in which to improve every part of the organization to ensure more efficiency in all aspects of design, production and engineering. This was followed by some restructuring.
The design work was carried out by a team of engineers headed by Neil Oatley, the team’s chief designer. Matthew Jeffreys was once again responsible for the design of the chassis (a position he has held since 1990). David North was project leader for the design of the transmission. David Neilson headed the suspension design team and former Cosworth engineer Mark Ingham (who joined McLaren in 1995 from Peugeot Sport) was in charge of the engine installation.
The aerodynamic work was conducted by Henri Durand, the head of the company’s aerodynamics, although project aerodynamicists on the MP4-12 were Phil Adey and Peter Prodromou. The team continues to use the British government-owned National Physical Laboratory windtunnel in Teddington, Middlesex – which McLaren engineers recently upgraded to 40% scale with a high-speed rolling road. The team does intend to build its own windtunnel – there may even be two windtunnels – when (and if) its gets planning permission for its new headquarters which it hopes to be allowed to build on a farm it bought 18 months ago at Fairoaks, to the north of Woking.
The design philosophy of the car was to analyse every single component with the aim of reducing weight and lowering the centre of gravity of the car. In order to achieve this 90% of the parts had to be redesigned. The Mercedes-Benz FO110E, designed and built for the German car company by Ilmor Engineering of Brixworth, follows similar development lines. It retains the same basic architecture but features a new sand-cast aluminium alloy block and different internals components. It weighs in at 124kgs which is 4kgs heavier than last year’s engine, but around the same as the Ferrari V10. It is the same length as the 1996 engine but is 24mm wider and 17mm lower. This means that the centre of gravity been lowered.
This has meant that the rear end aerodynamics have been substantially altered to take into account the new regulations for the rear impact zone and the reduced winglet area. The result is a newly-packaged longitudinal semi-automatic six-speed transmission and a rear suspension which features further use of composite parts. The result of all this work is a very neat and well thought-out rear with the weight very low indeed in the chassis.
The front end of the car has also been reworked considerably. The raised nose of the MP4/11 has been lowered to improve the airflow to the rear of the car and try to make up for some of the aerodynamic losses caused by the banning of rear winglets. The team continues to use advanced computational fluid dynamics software and has made major alterations to the internal air-flow of the car in an effort to improve the cooling efficiency.
The design team paid particular attention to creating a car which will be as “user-friendly” as possible for the McLaren race mechanics and in the Jerez testing the testing team was able to change one of the new V10s in just under an hour – despite having no real experience with the car. This will be a bonus for the team at races because practice time and the use of spare cars is severely restricted.
The McLaren MP4/12 was the car with which the McLaren Formula One team contested the 1997 Formula One season. It was driven by Mika Häkkinen and David Coulthard. The car proved extremely promising and could have won at least seven races during the course of the season, but reliability proved troublesome, in particular that of the engine.In pre-season testing the efforts were rewarded when Coulthard won the first race of the season, in Australia with Hakkinen finishing third. Though this was undoubtedly made slightly easier by the retirement of both Williams FW19s, the young Scot drove a cool race despite being under mounting pressure from Micheal Schumacher’s Ferrari. It was a fabulous result for the new West McLaren Mercedes team first time out.
With a new F-spec version of the Mercedes-Benz engine, the cars were by this time enjoying a field-leading 740bhp at 16,000rpm, but even this proved insufficient to push McLaren’s tally of wins for the season beyond three. This proved frustrating, especially after Coulthard won the first race of the season in Australia, McLaren’s first win since losing Ayrton Senna. The situation was exacerbated by Häkkinen retiring from three further races whilst in the lead – all from engine failures – including at the Nürburgring, where the team lost a comfortable one-two finish when both cars retired with identical failures within a lap of each other.
Coulthard also lost a certain victory – at Montreal, with a clutch problem after a precautionary pitstop just a few laps before the race prematurely ended. However, Coulthard also won a superb race at Monza even though he was again concerned by the car’s rear-end stability during much of the season.
The team finally claimed the reward of a one-two finish at the season finale after the collision between Michael Schumacher and Jacques Villeneuve, although it was a contentious finish with many nodding to the fact that Patrick Head of Williams and Ron Dennis of McLaren had negotiations where Villeneuve would give up the lead if the McLarens made sure to steer clear from the troubled Williams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmQXwMQCFik
Regardless, this was Häkkinen’s first win in F1 and was much celebrated by the F1 world which had been tipping him to win since he first outqualified Senna at Portugal in 1993.
Among other Formula One spectators, F1 Racing photographer Darren Heath had noticed the rear brakes on the McLarens glowing during acceleration zones of the A1-Ring in Austria, just one week prior to the GP of Luxembourg. Posted up within striking distance of where the McLarens ceased, Heath made his way over to Hakkinen’s car and captured photos of the MP4/12 pedal assembly. McLaren’s secret had been discovered.
Review of the developed film revealed a second brake pedal. This gave the driver the ability to manipulate either of the rear brakes independently of the others, eliminating understeer as well as wheel spin when exiting corners. The system was dubbed “brake steer”. Ron Dennis was furious to hear the brilliant system had been exposed only a short week after the Brake Steer system had been put into service.
The system would later be banned in the following season at the 1998 Brazilian Grand Prix, thanks to Ferrari’s protestations to the FIA.
Elsewhere, McLaren’s trademark resourcefulness demonstrated itself when it came to refuelling and pit strategies so that, at Buenos Aires, for example, where the car’s harder compound tyres were not best suited, a one-stop strategy enabled Hakkinen to move from 17th to fifth place by the flag. Similar manoeuvring was on target to take the Finn to second place at Silverstone, where Coulthard was dogged by brake trouble, until his engine failed six laps from the end.
The results of these improvements were not overwhelming but they were at least now making themselves felt even if nothing in 1997 could quite eclipse the latest Williams Renault. What mattered was that McLaren was once a ‘establishing itself as a Grand Prix winner. With resources already being poured into the following year’s effort, as the team directed much of its testing effort towards detailed preparation for the new era of narrow-track, grooved-tyre F1 cars, McLaren was very clearly back on track to become the pacesetter.
The team eventually finished fourth in the Constructors’ Championship, with 63 points.
McLaren later designed a road-car that shared a similar designation to the MP4/12: the McLaren MP4-12C, which also featured the “brake steer” system.
By PaRaDoX • MB MotorSports, McLaren 0 • Tags: 1997 McLaren, brake steer, McLaren, McLaren Mercedes, mercedes-benz, mp4 12, MP4/12