Formula 1 team Vodafone McLaren Mercedes took the unprecedented step of revealing its latest car, the radical MP4-26, by building it in front of a live audience in the center of Berlin.
Competition winners and fans carried different parts of the car into Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz to be assembled by team engineers. The vehicle was completed by McLaren drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button during Friday’s launch.
“I think today’s innovative launch demonstrates the enthusiasm within Vodafone McLaren Mercedes to engage the general public; to show them that our sport is intense and exciting, and that we’re very keen to showcase Formula 1 to the wider world,” team boss Martin Whitmarsh said. “We really want broaden the sport’s appeal while also introducing innovative and energy-conscious new ideas that will simultaneously improve racing and help generate new technologies within the motor industry.”
The largely chrome-finished vehicle has a range of new features designed to counteract the loss of recently-banned aerodynamic boosts such as McLaren’s innovative F-duct and the double-diffuser. The banning of these features means significant loss of downforce from the car, which McLaren has tried to claw back with an adjustable rear-wing system and distinctive U-shaped sidepods designed to feed air more efficiently to the car’s rear end.
The vehicle has reintroduced the kinetic energy recovery system — an electric hybrid system — to the 2011 car. The system was first used in 2009, but all teams agreed not to use it in 2010 because it was extremely costly and as such gave larger teams an unfair advantage.
“It wasn’t a difficult decision to reintroduce KERS,” engineering director Tim Goss said. “We found in 2009 it was very powerful to use the hybrid system for race starts. A number of teams who didn’t have it admitted that they lost because of KERS. If you were going to compete without KERS this year then you’d just be making up the numbers.”
Team reps were keen to point out some of the efficiency measures that they were taking. The Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) has launched an externally-audited carbon emissions reduction program that aims to cut the industry’s outsized carbon footprint 15 percent during the next three years.
Despite the facts the cars get less than 5 mpg, the engines account for less than one percent of the industry’s emissions. The industry’s supply chain is responsible for half of its emissions and another major source of carbon is the transport that moves teams and equipments from race to race.
The industry is looking to introduce more efficient engines by 2013, with the FIA and FOTA working together to tailor technical regulations to ensure that Formula One showcases technologies that are designed to enhance fuel efficiency.
“We must be seen to be socially relevant,” Whitmarsh said. “he sound of F1 cars is lovely, but F1 is a gas-guzzling, money-guzzling sport. That was acceptable in the ’70s and ’80s but increasingly efficiency is a more important part of the sport.”
This story was written by Olivia Solon of Wired UK.
Photo and video: McLaren
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