The MCL33 – the first car in McLaren’s 52-year history to be powered by Renault engines, following the team’s switch from Honda – adopts the papaya and blue colour scheme that the team’s founder Bruce McLaren first introduced to F1 50 years ago, and which was revived during Alonso’s Indy 500 attempt last year.
According to the Woking team, the MCL33 is ‘a logical development’ of last year’s car, which has been ‘developed and refined’ with the benefit of a year’s experience of the current regulations.
Much of the work on the new car has understandably gone into optimising the packaging of the new Renault power unit, and the incorporation of the new halo device.
Accommodating the new Renault power unit presented McLaren with significant challenges, with the French-built engine manufactured around a significantly different philosophy to its Honda predecessor.
There are two families of engine out there; the Mercedes and Honda concept, with the compressor at the front of the engine, turbine at the back, MGU-H sat in the vee; and the Ferrari and Renault approach, where the turbo-charger is at the back of the engine, and the MGU-H sits forwards into the vee.
Source : McLaren
