When it comes to Mclaren Chassis, I am the ultimate fanboy, and I'm sorry to inform you but the MP4/15 doesn't quite cut it.
Yes it is a figure of beauty, but arguably the MP4/14 really hits the sweet spot. With the 15 they reduced the length of the front nose cone which makes it snubbed, thus reduction in beauty.
Also at the base of the air intake above the drivers head they made the bottom of it flat and straight, when in the 13 & 14 it had a lovely curvature (spelling?) to it.
And finally the MP4/15 introduced chimney's onto the side pods. When looking at the sleek and beautiful profile of the 14, this spoiled it a bit.
I'm having greate difficulty finding large pictures of the mp4/14. I don't think they documented that year of Formula One particularly well...
I think the paintjob is getting gradually worse each year. The first year it looked "classic" and simple, but it's becoming more and more brash with each revision.
It's still nice, but getting a few too many stripes.
I actually spend at least 5 minutes thinking about what could be a good example... but I chose that because imho late 90's cars were the last good looking, after that the noses became retard and the era of 6000 little winglets started...
What the hell's this thing on the top of the Mclaren? It looks almost like a pitot tube, but why would that be necessary? And if it is, why wouldn't it be on the nose near the radio antenna?
And I must say Kovalainen's helmet colors look nearly identical to Alonso's while he was at Mclaren. From this angle, anyway.
They did it in testing for the last couple of years. Presumably it's an area of smooth airflow, so the pitot readings are more accurate for whatever it is they are measuring/trying/testing. Not many others do it, which is odd.
That thing is to measure the speed of the car more accurately I think, they use it in testing for most motorsport. You see it a lot on WTCC testing too.
IIRC Mclaren didn't test the slick tyres. And if they did they didn't use Hekki.
If they did, are there any pics of it? I would love some bigguns for a desktop
It kinda of seems strange to me to see a modern F1 car back with smooth slicks... almost unusual... especially for how long we had to bear with grooved ones.