TECH UPDATE Machine age
McLaren’s exclusive deal with tool manufacturer, Mazak, has led to a wealth of detail improvements on the 2012 car
Winning the first grand prix of the year and securing pole position at the second, it is clearly a strong design, and is the only car on the grid, aside from the back-marking Marussia, to feature a low nose chassis. Beyond the nose, which is
M
Below the unusual (for 2012) low nose, the McLaren has a radical new wing, constructed from billet aluminium, skinned with carbon, with ballast pockets
merely a continuation of the design concept of all recent McLarens, visually the car is fairly unremarkable but, as is so often the case, the details hold much of interest. Recently, the team revealed
Roll hoop is also machined from billet, and passed the crash test with flying colours, so will be pared down even further for the 2013 car
that it had renewed its exclusive CNC supply deal with machine tool manufacturer, Mazak, which has supplied a number of machines that change the way some components are made. Amongst these is the front wing, which is built rather like a modern aircraft wing, with a highly flexible aluminium central spar, so flexible in fact that it can be twisted with just one hand. The spar is then skinned with carbon fibre to give it stiffness. The spars are machined from a solid 160kg aluminium alloy billet down to the final part which weighs around 2-3kg. Ballast is carried in a pocket between the two front wing supports. This
cLaren’s MP4-27 has attracted great interest since its launch in early 2012.
BY SAM COLLINS
is not the first time McLaren has used an aluminium wing. In 2009, the team manufactured a wing entirely from aluminium as it did not have time to skin it with carbon ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix. It was then filled with tungsten to ensure it was the correct weight! Also cut from solid billet is the
roll structure of the car, which McLaren thought was marginal when it came to passing the pre-season crash tests. However, it passed easily, so the MP4-28 version for 2013 will have even more material removed (a saving of five per cent is targeted), reducing weight at the highest point of the car. McLaren supplies both
Wheel gun jaws are made in titanium to save on weight – not to make the job of the pit crew easier, but to save money on travel. With the wheel guns being shipped several thousand miles around the world over the course of a season, the saving on shipping outweighs the cost of manufacture
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www.racecar-engineering.com • May 2012
Force India and Marussia with gearboxes and, as a result, the manufacture of these is not covered by the Resource Restriction Agreement, but the team can still make savings in this area. Consequently, the advanced machine tools the team uses are used to make some parts more efficiently. The innermost part of the rear crash structure is a good example, as it is made from two halves of machined titanium, as is the rear case of the gearbox (the front is carbon fibre). In the past, the rear case and crash structure used to be mated to each other, so when the car suffered a rear impact the gearbox was written off. Now that is not the case. So for 2012 McLaren will make 24 gearboxes and just 12 crash structures, representing a significant saving. And whilst the RRA may not be in Formula 1 for much longer, a budget cap looks unavoidable, so for every £100,000 saved in the
Huge savings have been made by halving the number of machined titanium crash structures made
machine shop by working more efficiently, another machinist can be employed.
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