McLaren – Page 3 – I Watch Too Much Racing

Launch Season: McLaren MP4-24

McLaren-Mercedes MP4-24
The 2009 McLaren was unveiled at the Woking factory earlier today, along with the announcement that Ron Dennis was moving out of his F1 role to concentrate on McLaren’s ever growing portfolio in other areas.

The McLaren group of companies is active in electronics, engineering and is currently designing and building it’s own road car, as well as many other things which I’m not quite sure about…

Martin Whitmarsh, Ron’s long-time Lieutenant, will take over the day-to-day running of the race team as well as being the Top Dog at the racetrack. Dennis will remain as Chief Exec and will still oversee the general running of the F1 operation.
This has been coming for a while and was maybe due a 12-18 months ago, but the whole Stepneygate affair seemed to galvanise Ron into staying longer than maybe he’d originally planned. Still, it wasn’t expected that he’d announce it at the ’09 car launch.

The car itself looks absolutely gorgeous, save for the stupid-ass rear wing. On the other hand, now that we’re seeing true designs the front wings are growing on me, and they are sure to become further refined before we reach Melbourne. The rear wings definitely do need more work. The MP4-24 overall though looks absolutely fantastic in this colour-scheme without all of the aerodynamic and cooling devices on the main bodywork. This is the third car which looks better than the ’08 cars, discounting the main wings, so I’m very quickly becoming a fan of this particular new regulation!

By the way, is anyone else absolutely loving the return of slick tyres? They look brilliant on these cars. Racing cars should always run on slick tyres except when it is raining.

Here’s a pic from McLaren.com:

This chassis is actually the second ’24 constructed, the first car is already at the Algarve circuit in Portimao for a shakedown on Saturday, where McLaren have booked an exclusive test day. Other teams will join McLaren at the same venue next week. Check the news sites for on-track photos!

Previous launches (now with photos):
Toyota
Ferrari

I will return on Sunday. I’m thinking of doing something on British coverage of motorsport now that some announcements are coming through, although I may hold it for a while. In the meantime it looks like A1GP is falling to pieces so that could be an interesting talking point. The Furious Wedge is keeping tabs on things and I tend to agree with his assessments when it comes to A1GP.
(I’m developing a habit of ending my blog posts on a tangent, maybe I should reign that in a bit..)

Move along..

..nothing to see here.

I was going to write about the outcome of the McLaren/Hamilton penalty appeal but really, who expected any differently? They lost. Big deal. Who cares? We all expected them to lose. The only people who didn’t were either McLaren employees or British tabloid ‘journalists’.

And you know what? I agree with the penalty. Not the harshness of it, but the concept that he had a penalty. He gained an advantage by leaving the track and he didn’t relinquish the advantage in full before going for the pass – I agree.

My problem here is that Kimi did the same later on – if he’d finished the race, would he have been served with a penalty? I don’t think he would. The inconsistency and apparent Ferrari-bias – or at least anti-McLaren bias – of the officials just won’t seem to go away. They need at least one full time steward, preferably all three full-time, and for at least one to have competed in Grands Prix before.

Oh. It turns out I DID write about the outcome of the McLaren/Hamilton penalty appeal.

The post is fuelled by red wine, Lemon Jelly, and a relaxed couple of days off work.
(you really need to listen to “The Curse of Ka’Zar” in that state of mind)

McLaren look forward to night race

On the F1NGers newsgroup somebody posted this link to a video preview from McLaren, a chat with Martin Whitmarsh ahead of F1’s first night race which will be held in Singapore in ten days’ time.