another car into this gallery - Senna's MP4-4
MP4-4-01 by
David Freeman, on Flickr
MP4-4-02 by
David Freeman, on Flickr
MP4-4-03 by
David Freeman, on Flickr
McLAREN MP4/4
The McLaren MP4/4 was a highly successful Formula 1 car that competed in the 1988 Formula One season. It was designed by Gordon Murray, who based the design on his lowline Brabham BT55 car of 1986, and American engineer Steve Nichols. It is one of the most dominant Formula One cars ever built, winning all but one race in the 1988 season.
After a relatively disappointing 1987 Formula One season, when McLaren’s Techniques d'Avant Garde Porsche lost out nine times to the dominant Honda powered Williams, twice to Team Lotus and twice in the latter stages to Ferrari, taking only three wins, McLaren secured the 1500cc Honda V6 Turbo engines, the most powerful in F1 at the time. With the engines coming at the expense of Williams, a strong 1988 Formula One Season was possible. 1988 was due to be the last year for the turbo engines before they were banned, so most teams were making a concerted effort to establish themselves with
naturally-aspirated cars. Murray went ahead with the design of the car on a purely turbo engined basis, which put the team at a distinct advantage over their rivals.
The lowline chassis layout was pioneered when Murray was at Brabham. The idea being that a low car would be more aerodynamically efficient and allow more air to pass over the rear wing causing more downforce to be produced, but without excessive drag. In theory this sounded great. In practice the BMW engine used in the Brabham proved troublesome in this layout with fuel starvation problems and engine installation issues plaguing the BT55. However the Honda unit was much smaller and had a lower centre of gravity than its BMW counterpart, so it was ideal for the low-down chassis layout. With this in mind, Murray revised his design and went ahead with his plan.
For the 1988 season, six MP4/4 cars were moulded from carbon fibre with assistance from Hercules Aerospace. The chassis numbers, 1 through 6, were used throughout the year. All six MP4/4 chassis still exist: Chassis #1, 3, 4, & 6 are owned by the McLaren Group, Chassis #5 is owned by Honda and Chassis #2 is on display here.