Formula One car development blog

Honda have spent 3 of its 7 development tokens to resolve some of the most important issues of the carmakers' current F1 power plant, and subsequently made the upgraded engine specification available to McLaren for initial running on Friday at Spa-Francorchamps.

Part of the engine's upgrade include modifications on the combustion chamber, the intake and the exhaust system layout in an attempt to increase efficiency. The team have also reduced mechanical friction by changing the gear... Read more

Only just validated in an FIA crash test, McLaren brought its new shorter nose to the Austrian Grand Prix, with the single available item to be fitted on Fernando Alonso's car. As was publicly stated by several teams in winter testing, short noses do have their advantages, particularly due to the mandatory neutral central section of the front wing.

Red Bull Racing is the other recent example of reducing the car's nose, even though it wasn't as radical a change as McLaren did, replac... Read more

McLaren is pushing on with aerodynamic development while Honda focuses on getting its power unit up to speed. The most notable update seen on the MP4-30 chassis at Malaysia is the addition of an S-duct in the nose cone, undoubtedly pushed by Petr Prodromou who worked on the feature with Red Bull in recent years.

Similar to the inlet on the Red Bull RB11, air is caught via a wide channel underneath the entire span of the nose cone, with the outer extremities however feeding channels ... Read more

McLaren's long term wheel supplier, Enkei, has provided the team with new rims for the 2015 season, or at least the start of it. Finished in matte black, the wheels were on display at Jerez today, showing very different front and rear wheel designs. The reasons for this are obvious, with first of all wider tyres at the rear, but more importantly for their design, much less heat coming from the rear brakes. Due to weight transfer under braking, and the energy recovery system that kic... Read more