The MP4/13 was the first McLaren car completely designed under the lead of Adrian Newey. The year before, when Newey arrived at the Woking-based team, the design of the MP4/12 was already too advanced for him to have a major influence in it. Having left Williams and been placed on ‘gardening leave’ he had plenty of time to contemplate F1’s change to narrower cars and grooved tyres.
In defiance of superstition, his creation was dubbed the MP4-13. McLaren made sure science trumped irrationality by investing 12,000 man-hours into clawing back the downforce taken away by the rules change. The MP4-13 was a classically undramatic but hugely effective Newey creation.
Aerodynamic efficiency was where Newey excelled and he revised the existing chassis design accordingly. The finished car was a neat and tidy package, relatively small and compact and perhaps because there were no completely radical new features on it everything tended to work well from the very start. Still in place was the previous season’s low-level nose design, but the front suspension was quite different with inboard vertical dampers and torsion bars in place of the previous car’s horizontally mounted coil spring/damper units. This in turn allowed for slimming down the monocoque.
In addition to the switch to grooved tyres, McLaren also changed suppliers over the winter from long-time partner Goodyear to Bridgestone. GOODYEAR was dissatisfied with the FIA’s imposition of grooves in the tread to reduce cornering speeds and abandoned the sport at the end of the year. The switch to Bridgestone cost the team some valuable time when it came to finalizing the suspension geometry, but it proved worthwhile.
These were the factors which inevitably drove the whole programme, while other team members battled with the demands of the new narrower-track/grooved tyre regime.
Engine supplier Mercedes-Benz also spared no expensive and provided McLaren with the third evolution of their ‘FO 110’ engine in two years. Compared to the ‘E’ evolution introduced at the start of 1997, the latest ‘G’ specification was nearly 20 kg lighter, tipping the scales at just 107 kg. As before the V10 boasted four valves per cylinder, which were actuated by tappets and pneumatic springs. It produced an impressive 760 bhp at around 16,000 rpm. This power was transferred to the rear wheels through McLaren’s proprietary six-speed gearbox.
1998 was a massive opportunity for the McLaren team as the new FIA regulations stipulated a decrease in car width from 2000 mm to 1800 mm. Rather than shortening the wheelbase, McLaren kept it approximately the same and ended up being around three seconds a lap faster than closest competitor Ferrari.
The car was launched at McLaren’s Woking headquarters on Thursday 5th February 1998 in an interim McLaren orange livery. The definitive grey and red livery was only unveiled at Barcelona on 16 February.
Very quick straight out of the box, the MP4-13 was driven to a one-two victory by Hakkinen and Coulthard at the first race of the season. Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard won by a lap, despite Hakkinen accidentally pulling into the pits when he didn’t need to. Coulthard inherited the lead due to Hakkinen’s blunder and, in a move he later regretted, backed off and let his team mate re-pass him.
Beafore the Brazilian GP at Interlagos though, Ferrari requested an investigation as it believed the McLaren’s were running an illegal braking system. A third pedal in the driver’s footwell which allowed either of the rear brakes to be independently controlled – was not new: it had already been raced on the 1997 car, MP4/12.
It emerged that the Italian team was thinking that McLaren was using a mechanical system that links the steering with the brakes. Ferrari argued that the system amounts to four-wheel steering which is banned under Article 10.4.1 of the F1 technical regulations. Ahead of the season though, the new system had been given the green light by the FIA technical team, so the team was somewhat surprised when it was banned prior to the second race of the season in Brazil. It didn’t take a cynic to surmise that McLaren’s crushing dominance in the season-opener at Melbourne might have had something to do with it.
In the interest of the sport McLaren decided to withdraw the system rather than muddy the water in what it felt would be a Championship-winning year. This was a typically shrewd move, and even without the system the drivers managed another McLaren 1-2 leaving Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher almost a lap behind.
Neil Oatley nevertheless recalled: “We didn’t really expect to be so competitive, at least until the car went to Barcelona, and literally the first run we did was quicker than anyone else had all week, so that gave us an inkling that we had reasonably competitive car.”
Some said even that McLaren was using brake energy to generate electrical power that is stored in batteries. This electricity was used to run auxiliary pumps on the engine to push out an additional 30 to 40 hp for a limited period.
At Buenos Aires, Schumacher fought back to win as Coulthard finished sixth. David Coulthard beat Häkkinen to win at lmola, and dominated again at Montreal until the throttle mechanism malfunctioned. “Embarrassing,” Ron Dennis called it, but the Finn soon reasserted his dominance after this and was never any lower than third on the grid, eventually posting nine poles, three second places and four thirds on the startline.
As the results show, Coulthard‘s throttle disaster was a rare failure, as was Hakkinen‘s retirement at lmola. Generally the cars performed exceptionally well although DC experienced a couple of bottom-end failures at Monza and Monaco while Hakkinen’s handling went awry in Budapest when the front anti-roll bar worked loose, costing the team a race win.
The team took full advantage of the downtime between races to test and refine the car, and towards the end of the season Häkkinen was able to find that little bit extra. Despite winning six races with just two still up for grabs, he was tied neck-and-neck with Schumacher. At the Nürburgring, however, he left nothing to chance, storming ahead to a victory which left the German trailing by a significant, but hardly decisive, four points. As a result there was still everything to fight for at the last race in Japan. It was nail-biting stuff, a real down-to-the-wire situation.
Fortunately, the Mika magic held true. “He drove an exceptional race at Suzuka,“ Oatley said. “He was very quick all weekend, didn’t make a single mistake, and the car was strong.” By the end of the afternoon Häkkinen had delivered a great victory, and with exactly 100 points handed McLaren its first World Championship since Ayrton Senna‘s heyday. With one win of his own and six second-places Coulthard came third with 56 points, sufficient to give West McLaren Mercedes and the MP4-13 the Constructors‘ title as well.
McLaren won the constructors’ championship with 156 points. In 16 competed races, the drivers enjoyed 12 pole positions, 18 podium finishes, 8 wins for Häkkinen and one for Coulthard. During the 1998 season, Coulthard’s MP4/13 speed trapped the highest of all 1998 cars when he was clocked at 353 km/h (219 mph) at the old Hockenheim circuit.
From a base of three race wins in 1997, the team went on to win yet another Drivers‘ and Constructors‘ World Championship double, and its first with Mercedes-Benz and West.
Over the winter the MP4-13 evolved into the MP4-14..
Nick Heidfeld’s Goodwood Festival of Speed record in the McLaren MP4-13
The McLaren MP4-13 has a special place in the history of the Goodwood Festival of Speed for two reasons. It set the record time for climbing the hill and brought an end to F1 cars competing in the hillclimb.
In 1999 the team’s 22-year-old test driver Nick Heidfeld was tasked with taking the car up the hill. As he pulled up at the start gantry McLaren’s Martin Whitmarsh leant into the cockpit and told him, “be careful, don’t do anything silly… but just make sure you’re quickest.”
He certainly got the last part right: 41.6 seconds later Heidfeld was at the top of the hill, having ascended it at an average speed of more than 160kph (100mph):
Whitmarsh watched Heidfeld’s blistering run wide-eyed: “I realised how irresponsible I’d just been,” he said later.
After that he went to see Lord March, the event organiser, and suggested that perhaps it was too dangerous for F1 cars to attempt the hill flat-out. Since then, they haven’t – at least, not officially…
Specifications
Chassis: carbon fiber, aluminium
Gearbox: 6 gears
Cooling system: two McLaren/Calsonic water radiators, two McLaren/Marston oil radiators.
Tyres: Bridgestone
Wheels: Enkei 13″
Brakes: AP Racing discs and claws
Dimensions
Length: 4550 mm
Front track: 1492 mm
Rear track: 1412 mm
Wheelbase: 2985 mm
Weight: 600 kg (including water, oil and driver
Engine
Designation: Mercedes-Benz FO 110G
Cylinders: 10, in a 72° angle
Valves: 4 per cylinder
Length: 590 mm
Breadth: 546.4 mm
Height: 476 mm
Weight: 107 kilogrammes
Power: 780 bhp
Oil and Petrol: Mobil
Ignition: TAG 2000
Spark plugs: NGK
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 18 2014
1998 McLaren Mercedes MP4/13
Winning big…
The MP4/13 was the first McLaren car completely designed under the lead of Adrian Newey. The year before, when Newey arrived at the Woking-based team, the design of the MP4/12 was already too advanced for him to have a major influence in it. Having left Williams and been placed on ‘gardening leave’ he had plenty of time to contemplate F1’s change to narrower cars and grooved tyres.
In defiance of superstition, his creation was dubbed the MP4-13. McLaren made sure science trumped irrationality by investing 12,000 man-hours into clawing back the downforce taken away by the rules change. The MP4-13 was a classically undramatic but hugely effective Newey creation.
Aerodynamic efficiency was where Newey excelled and he revised the existing chassis design accordingly. The finished car was a neat and tidy package, relatively small and compact and perhaps because there were no completely radical new features on it everything tended to work well from the very start. Still in place was the previous season’s low-level nose design, but the front suspension was quite different with inboard vertical dampers and torsion bars in place of the previous car’s horizontally mounted coil spring/damper units. This in turn allowed for slimming down the monocoque.
In addition to the switch to grooved tyres, McLaren also changed suppliers over the winter from long-time partner Goodyear to Bridgestone. GOODYEAR was dissatisfied with the FIA’s imposition of grooves in the tread to reduce cornering speeds and abandoned the sport at the end of the year. The switch to Bridgestone cost the team some valuable time when it came to finalizing the suspension geometry, but it proved worthwhile.
These were the factors which inevitably drove the whole programme, while other team members battled with the demands of the new narrower-track/grooved tyre regime.
Engine supplier Mercedes-Benz also spared no expensive and provided McLaren with the third evolution of their ‘FO 110’ engine in two years. Compared to the ‘E’ evolution introduced at the start of 1997, the latest ‘G’ specification was nearly 20 kg lighter, tipping the scales at just 107 kg. As before the V10 boasted four valves per cylinder, which were actuated by tappets and pneumatic springs. It produced an impressive 760 bhp at around 16,000 rpm. This power was transferred to the rear wheels through McLaren’s proprietary six-speed gearbox.
1998 was a massive opportunity for the McLaren team as the new FIA regulations stipulated a decrease in car width from 2000 mm to 1800 mm. Rather than shortening the wheelbase, McLaren kept it approximately the same and ended up being around three seconds a lap faster than closest competitor Ferrari.
The car was launched at McLaren’s Woking headquarters on Thursday 5th February 1998 in an interim McLaren orange livery. The definitive grey and red livery was only unveiled at Barcelona on 16 February.
Very quick straight out of the box, the MP4-13 was driven to a one-two victory by Hakkinen and Coulthard at the first race of the season. Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard won by a lap, despite Hakkinen accidentally pulling into the pits when he didn’t need to. Coulthard inherited the lead due to Hakkinen’s blunder and, in a move he later regretted, backed off and let his team mate re-pass him.
Beafore the Brazilian GP at Interlagos though, Ferrari requested an investigation as it believed the McLaren’s were running an illegal braking system. A third pedal in the driver’s footwell which allowed either of the rear brakes to be independently controlled – was not new: it had already been raced on the 1997 car, MP4/12.
It emerged that the Italian team was thinking that McLaren was using a mechanical system that links the steering with the brakes. Ferrari argued that the system amounts to four-wheel steering which is banned under Article 10.4.1 of the F1 technical regulations. Ahead of the season though, the new system had been given the green light by the FIA technical team, so the team was somewhat surprised when it was banned prior to the second race of the season in Brazil. It didn’t take a cynic to surmise that McLaren’s crushing dominance in the season-opener at Melbourne might have had something to do with it.
In the interest of the sport McLaren decided to withdraw the system rather than muddy the water in what it felt would be a Championship-winning year. This was a typically shrewd move, and even without the system the drivers managed another McLaren 1-2 leaving Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher almost a lap behind.
Neil Oatley nevertheless recalled: “We didn’t really expect to be so competitive, at least until the car went to Barcelona, and literally the first run we did was quicker than anyone else had all week, so that gave us an inkling that we had reasonably competitive car.”
Some said even that McLaren was using brake energy to generate electrical power that is stored in batteries. This electricity was used to run auxiliary pumps on the engine to push out an additional 30 to 40 hp for a limited period.
At Buenos Aires, Schumacher fought back to win as Coulthard finished sixth. David Coulthard beat Häkkinen to win at lmola, and dominated again at Montreal until the throttle mechanism malfunctioned. “Embarrassing,” Ron Dennis called it, but the Finn soon reasserted his dominance after this and was never any lower than third on the grid, eventually posting nine poles, three second places and four thirds on the startline.
As the results show, Coulthard‘s throttle disaster was a rare failure, as was Hakkinen‘s retirement at lmola. Generally the cars performed exceptionally well although DC experienced a couple of bottom-end failures at Monza and Monaco while Hakkinen’s handling went awry in Budapest when the front anti-roll bar worked loose, costing the team a race win.
The team took full advantage of the downtime between races to test and refine the car, and towards the end of the season Häkkinen was able to find that little bit extra. Despite winning six races with just two still up for grabs, he was tied neck-and-neck with Schumacher. At the Nürburgring, however, he left nothing to chance, storming ahead to a victory which left the German trailing by a significant, but hardly decisive, four points. As a result there was still everything to fight for at the last race in Japan. It was nail-biting stuff, a real down-to-the-wire situation.
Fortunately, the Mika magic held true. “He drove an exceptional race at Suzuka,“ Oatley said. “He was very quick all weekend, didn’t make a single mistake, and the car was strong.” By the end of the afternoon Häkkinen had delivered a great victory, and with exactly 100 points handed McLaren its first World Championship since Ayrton Senna‘s heyday. With one win of his own and six second-places Coulthard came third with 56 points, sufficient to give West McLaren Mercedes and the MP4-13 the Constructors‘ title as well.
McLaren won the constructors’ championship with 156 points. In 16 competed races, the drivers enjoyed 12 pole positions, 18 podium finishes, 8 wins for Häkkinen and one for Coulthard. During the 1998 season, Coulthard’s MP4/13 speed trapped the highest of all 1998 cars when he was clocked at 353 km/h (219 mph) at the old Hockenheim circuit.
From a base of three race wins in 1997, the team went on to win yet another Drivers‘ and Constructors‘ World Championship double, and its first with Mercedes-Benz and West.
Over the winter the MP4-13 evolved into the MP4-14..
Nick Heidfeld’s Goodwood Festival of Speed record in the McLaren MP4-13
The McLaren MP4-13 has a special place in the history of the Goodwood Festival of Speed for two reasons. It set the record time for climbing the hill and brought an end to F1 cars competing in the hillclimb.
In 1999 the team’s 22-year-old test driver Nick Heidfeld was tasked with taking the car up the hill. As he pulled up at the start gantry McLaren’s Martin Whitmarsh leant into the cockpit and told him, “be careful, don’t do anything silly… but just make sure you’re quickest.”
He certainly got the last part right: 41.6 seconds later Heidfeld was at the top of the hill, having ascended it at an average speed of more than 160kph (100mph):
Whitmarsh watched Heidfeld’s blistering run wide-eyed: “I realised how irresponsible I’d just been,” he said later.
After that he went to see Lord March, the event organiser, and suggested that perhaps it was too dangerous for F1 cars to attempt the hill flat-out. Since then, they haven’t – at least, not officially…
Specifications
Chassis: carbon fiber, aluminium
Gearbox: 6 gears
Cooling system: two McLaren/Calsonic water radiators, two McLaren/Marston oil radiators.
Tyres: Bridgestone
Wheels: Enkei 13″
Brakes: AP Racing discs and claws
Dimensions
Length: 4550 mm
Front track: 1492 mm
Rear track: 1412 mm
Wheelbase: 2985 mm
Weight: 600 kg (including water, oil and driver
Engine
Designation: Mercedes-Benz FO 110G
Cylinders: 10, in a 72° angle
Valves: 4 per cylinder
Length: 590 mm
Breadth: 546.4 mm
Height: 476 mm
Weight: 107 kilogrammes
Power: 780 bhp
Oil and Petrol: Mobil
Ignition: TAG 2000
Spark plugs: NGK
By PaRaDoX • MB MotorSports, McLaren 0 • Tags: 1998 McLaren, Mclaren Mp4, McLaren MP4 13, Mercedes McLaren MP4 13, mercedes-benz, Mercedes-Benz motorsport