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McLaren MP4-30 marks Honda's hotly anticipated F1 return

McLaren's Formula One fortunes have drastically dropped in performance over the past couple of seasons. The Formula One team with a dozen Drivers' Championships, eight Constructors' Titles and 182 grand prix victories to its name hasn't won a race since 2012, and finished the past two seasons down in fifth place. But now it begins a new era – or rather, restarts one. And this is the machine that's kicking it all off. After a 23-year parting of ways, McLaren has brought Honda back onto the grid for this season, and will be the only team running the Japanese automaker's brand-new RA615H turbocharged hybrid power unit. Both parties are undoubtedly hoping the rekindled partnership will bring them back to the winning days of the late Eighties when Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost memorably drove their equipment to four consecutive World Championships. Largely an evolution of last season's Mercedes-powered MP4-29, the new chassis features a new front-end design to comply with the latest adjustment to the regulations from the FIA, and also incorporates a slimmer rear end built around the new Honda engine and gearbox. It also features a revised livery that adds more black to the red and silver color scheme, and does without a title partner for the time being, but includes the logos of sponsors Mobil1, SAP, TAG Heuer, Johnnie Walker, Hilton, CNN and KPMG, as well as that of Honda. Though this season will likely be more of a transition and development year for McLaren and Honda, all eyes will surely be fixed on the team to see how the new MP4-30 will fare. Fortunately, they've lined up a compelling roster of drivers, lead by former World Champions Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button. McLAREN-HONDA BEGINS NEW ERA WITH MP4-30 #McLarenHonda #MakeHistory McLaren-Honda – the name evokes stirring memories of the past; of Ayrton Senna battling Alain Prost for supremacy; of classic red and white machines dominating for season upon season; of an iconic team writing one of the defining chapters in the motor racing history books. Reuniting such an illustrious partnership brings with it the heavy weight of expectation, but all at McLaren and Honda are working to write a fresh chapter in Formula 1, one that respectfully nods to the past, but boldly looks to the horizon. Today's reveal of the new McLaren-Honda MP4-30 – McLaren's first Honda-powered car for 23 years – speaks volumes about the progressive nature of both companies.

McLaren's F1 team will 3D print parts trackside

When McLaren Racing heads to the Bahrain Grand Prix next week, the constructor will take with it something the motorsport has not yet seen trackside: a 3D printer. The Formula One team has confirmed that as an expansion of its partnership with 3D printing specialist Stratasys, it will print "race-ready" parts for the new McLaren MCL32 car in order to quickly integrate design modifications and reduce its weight. The parts include carbon-fiber reinforced nylon material hydraulic line brackets, rubber-like flexible radio cables, brake cooling ducts and rear wing flaps, which help increase the rear downforce on the car during high speeds. In most cases, 3D printing has reduced manufacturing time from weeks to days or even hours, which helps the team during testing and when readying its cars for race days. "We are consistently modifying and improving our Formula 1 car designs, so the ability to test new designs quickly is critical to making the car lighter and more importantly increasing the number of tangible iterations in improved car performance," said Neil Oatley, McLaren Racing's Design and Development Director. "If we can bring new developments to the car one race earlier - going from new idea to new part in only a few days – this will be a key factor in making the McLaren MCL32 more competitive." While the Stratasys uPrint SE Plus will perform important duties on the road, McLaren Racing employs more complex machinery at the McLaren Applied Technologies headquarters in Woking, England. Both fused deposition modelling (FDM) and PolyJet printing technologies are being used for prototyping new car models, production tooling and development of custom parts, which McLaren hopes will translate to faster race times on the track.Matt Brian wrote this article for Engadget.Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. News Source: EngadgetImage Credit: Mark Thompson / Getty Images Motorsports McLaren Technology Emerging Technologies Racing Vehicles F1

McLaren testing an EV, but challenges remain to electrify a hypercar

There are new details on McLaren's ongoing quest to build an all-electric supercar. Autocar reports that the specialty carmaker has been testing an EV mule to evaluate driver engagement and has discovered it's still a big leap to fully electrifying a track car. The biggest stumbling block remains the battery technology and the enormous energy demands of track racing. "Let's say you want to drive on a track for half an hour," Dan Parry-Williams, McLaren's engineering design director, told Autocar. "If that was an EV, that car would have over 500 miles of EV range, and it would be flat as a pancake at the end. The energy required to do really high performance on track is staggering. And then you have to recharge it." He notes that the technology is improving but adds that "there's a lot more investment" going into range-extending energy-dense batteries than into the kind of power density needed for supercar performance. McLaren has been talking about making fully electric versions of its cars for a while now, but it sounds like a pure EV hypercard is still a ways off. Meanwhile, expect it to focus on hybrids: McLaren plans to have half of its fleet feature hybrid powertrains by 2022. Its P1 already has a hybrid powertrain, as will the forthcoming BP23. "You can potentially manage (a flat battery) with a niche car," Parry-Williams told Autocar. "If you exhaust the battery but then have to do one recharging lap, that strikes me as being OK. But if you haven't got an on-board generator (and) you've got a full EV, you haven't got the luxury of doing that."Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. McLaren 720S First Drive | Autoblog