Problematic F1 Cars - 2003 Mclaren MP4-18

they call it the Forgotten McLaren the car that was revolutionary truly ahead of its time hobbys of the Forgotten McLaren include spontaneously catching on fire spontaneously breaking in half spontaneously losing Wheels spontaneously losing breaks boy is it a story but we can't talk about McLaren in the early 2000s without talking about Adrian Nui one of the most successful aerodynamicists in Formula One history one of the goats but even Ted Williams had to strike out every now and then it's all part of the game we'll be talking a lot about Adrian Nui in this video because he alongside Mike Coughlin and Neil Oatley designed and helped bring to fruition one of the most infamous cars to ever compete in Formula One except it never did compete in Formula One even with a near unlimited budget unlimited testing and some of the best engineers and aerodynamicists in Formula One the 2003 McLaren mp418 doesn't exactly roll off the tongue does it never actually competed in a race weekend how is that possible do you know Adrian Dewey and Jeremy Clarkson went to the same High School the year is 1999 and Michael Schumacher has brought glory to Ferrari playing a huge role in leading the team to their first Constructors trophy in almost 20 years and then at the turn of the Millennium in 2000 Ferrari would not only take home game instructors again but this time my goal would hold the drivers championship trophy in that famous red suit for the very first time and again in 2001 and then again in 2002 and of course we know how the story goes but before Ferrari was doing the winning then who was that's right McLaren in 1998 McLaren secured both championships in the hands of Mika hakanin and David coldheart it wasn't a slam dunk because Ferrari was on their tail the whole time but still McLaren were doing well and they've been doing pretty well for a while certainly not the McLaren that we know today damn it ignoring a bit of a dry spell from 1994 to 1996 they generally always had their nose up towards the front end of the grid battling for wins and podiums and 90s F1 Glory relatively often but come 2000 and there's a new Top Dog in town and McLaren needs to do something to have a chance to get back on the top going into the 2003 season but more on that later just bear with me on this despite Ferrari's somewhat dominant performance since 2000 2001 and 2002 McLaren managed to stay at the top and push the Italian team to those Constructors championships they didn't always make it easy for them they stayed close but just weren't able to put together a complete package that could keep up with the V10 powered Ferrari and it wasn't just those two teams battling for wins either he also had a BMW powered Williams in the mix right up there with McLaren the competition was fierce it's also worth mentioning that in the early 2000s while they might not have had the best chassis or the best engine that would be the BMW being ran in the aforementioned Williams also didn't exactly have the strongest driver pairing either Michael Schumacher was Unstoppable and only getting better only getting faster and more schumacher-ish meanwhile McLaren Starman Mika hakanin was kind of going in the opposite direction we won't go into that too much but the tldr is that he had a couple of really big mechanical failures in late 90s and early 2000s that seemed to have put a real damper on his motivation he lost trust in his equipment in his 2002 sabbatical would eventually turn into a permanent retirement which would allow young rookie and eventual 2007 Champion Kimi raikkonen to take his place but still even if McLaren did have a prime Mika or prime Kimmy or prime David the car was getting slower year after year and it was also getting less and less reliable in 2001 McLaren had 10 retirements in 2002 they would go on to have 14 retirements they wrapped up third of the constructors in 2002 156 points behind Ferrari and 27 points behind Williams with neither David or Kimmy putting a real Dent into Michael Schumacher's lead 2002 was bad they needed a silver bullet they needed somebody who could think outside the box and they had just the right man for the job Adrian knew he started with McLaren in 1997 and immediately set off to work on the 1998 car which would of course as we just said go on to win both titles that year for Mika hacking and McLaren of course the next year in 1999 Mika goes on to Win It Again the team as a whole just barely losing out to Ferrari but like we just discussed following 98.99 the car just got progressively worse and worse so when it came around to 2003 the team team led by Ron Dennis decided that the only answer to Ferrari Dominus was a complete Revolution not an evolution in the past few videos we covered the 2009 Ferrari f60 and the 2022 Mercedes W13 and what did these two cars have in common two dominant forces in the Formula One Universe getting a new set of regulations wrong and not staying at the top during a huge change in Formula One but in 2003 there wasn't anything like that regulations stayed pretty much the same from 2001 and 2002 apart from some updated technical regulations for example 2003 saw the introduction of the Hans device to keep driver's heads from flying all over the place in a high-speed impact a one lab qualifying format was introduced which sucked and most importantly for a team like McLaren the point system was completely overhauled for the first time since 1991 and McLaren's plan going into the 2003 season would be to start off with an updated version of the card that they ran the year before in 2002 while they finished getting the mp418 ready to go so that it can start winning races and getting those big points so when McLaren lined up for the first race of the 2003 season the car that they actually brought was the mp417d an updated version of the same car that they ran in 2002 and the updated 7 D was actually really good now at the opening round in Australia David coldheart would qualify 11 and Kimmy reichen and did qualify 15 after he made an error which wasn't fantastic but it was this weird One-Shot qualifying format and the car is also qualified with race fuel loads so they were really heavy it was some bad weather on race day and a bit of luck David coolpart would actually go on to win the race and Kimmy finished third so both McLaren's on the podium first race of the 2003 season with an updated car that they were using from last year pretty good way to start the year it was looking good for the silver cars and it finally looked like Ferrari were going to have some real competition didn't just stop there either the stopgap card would actually give Kimmy Rankin and his debut win at the very next race in Malaysia unfortunately those the season were on it became clear that the mp417d was reaching the limit of its development potential as other teams were making more and more progress with their cars especially Ferrari who were furiously developing the f2003 and it was working despite McLaren's strong start in the season Michael Schumacher would go on to win the next three races after the Brazilian Grand Prix to put himself within just two points of raikkonen in the drivers championship and plays Ferrari back ahead of Aaron in the Constructors Championship McClary needed their new car which Nui and Coughlin had been working on for quite a while at this point and they needed it badly it was going to be the only way to get back ahead of Ferrari who can only make the f-2003 faster while the updated mp417d was pretty much capped however just three days after Schumacher had won the Austrian Grand Prix his third win in a row McLaren would finally release their new machines to the public the mp418 the car looked very different from the mp417 that they had been running for two years now the old car was boxy and angular while the new 18 was sleek and smoothed with sweeping curves and a modern look and it was also technically very different from anything Carr featured very small side pods to help improve aerodynamics and the exhausts exited out from under the gearbox and blew into the diffuser revolutionary at the time in fact this was the same technology that Nui would later perfect with Red Bull during the 2010s and again we all know how that story goes which is kind of a theme for the whole car a lot of innovative never before done ideas that well they might not have worked out very well here in 2003 these same ideas would often resurface years later and turn out to be revolutionary like the blowing diffuse user like the gearbox which we'll go over in a second car also featured a brand new Mercedes engine specifically designed to be located as alone the car is possible for the optimal center of gravity finally the car also used a titanium composite gearbox which was the first of its kind this is a gearbox casing made with carbon fiber bonded to Titanium Parts which made the gearbox much lighter this was extremely difficult to do and made many people even question whether the gearbox would last race distances but if the mp418 was supposed to start earlier in the year Why didn't it why are we so many races into the season and we still haven't seen it on track well now we get into the problems and there's a lot of problems for starters the mp418 had failed the FIA crash tests now this wasn't that big of a deal it wasn't super uncommon in fact it's actually set by Engineers on the grid even today that if a car doesn't fail its first couple of crash tests then that usually means it's too heavy and that you're compromising on Pace of course as we'll discuss you'll see why I never would have made it to the grid anyways regardless of it had passed or not car couldn't withstand side impacts not good by this point in the story The mp418 has missed the first six rounds of the 2003 season when it was ready to make its first full testing session over a three-day period McLarens has driver Alexander Wars uh no I'm not saying that neighborhood he was going to be the one testing the car this was back in the day when test drivers were actually useful and Alexander had joined the team in 2000 hoping to take Mika hacking and see when he took a sabbatical but McLaren gave that seat to Kimmy instead three-day testing session was going to take place at Paul Ricard and during its first time really running on track it was actually very promising on its very first outing it was already lapping faster than the mp417d that the team had been racing with all year at this point and the car was looking full of potential but it didn't take long for the headaches to start for the team of all the issues it had one of the biggest ones was overheating the car would overheat and burst into flames often it was so common for the car to overheat and ignite the mechanics usually would be standing by with fire extinguishers every time the car rolled into the pit Lane the reason for the overheating was mainly down to the cooling package that it had because of the location of the exhaust and the new lower mounted engine made it very difficult to keep everything cool there just wasn't anywhere for the heat from the exhaust to escape to and this meant that the car couldn't be run more than a couple of laps without severely overheating prompting Nui to shove the blown diffuser element of the car just after the first test and moved the exhaust to a more conventional higher location in an almost periscope-like fashion since that was the prevailing idea at the time okay so the car had problems passing crash tests and had severe overheating problems there's always a work around it doesn't sound like anything too crazy right well Clarion had to push back the launch of the new car even more to redesign the exhaust and try and fix their heat problem but by the time the car was ready for Alexander to test again it was already mid-july and the team was hoping for a debut at the British Grand Prix next testing session would take place in Spain it was at this testing session that the car would go from Annoying to getting the unfortunate nickname for a race car the suicide Contraption as the Austrian was going through the fast left-hander through turn four the floor of the car just suddenly collapsed without any warning whatsoever Alexander was thankfully all right after the incident but the team was never able to actually find out exactly what made the floor fail like it did they couldn't find a reason or an explanation why it just suddenly collapsed so at this point not only were the drivers rightfully concerned with the safety and the structural Integrity of the car itself but the mechanics were sick of working on it too cars designed by Adrian Nuy are notorious for being very difficult to work on it's all about the performance and whether it's convenient or not to work on is completely irrelevant because all that matters is a result it's an okay sure that works but only to a point design of the entire car was so detailed and so complex that just a simple setup change would mean that the entire car had to be completely disassembled and reassembled again the lower mounted engine made everything so difficult to get to and core components needed fixed or worked on and then we're working on it all the time because the mp418 really enjoyed catching on fire or it is integrating like we just discussed at a moment's notice so it overheats and fails crash tests and splits in half sometimes and it's impossible to work on whatever no big deal what else well McLaren were undeterred by this which makes sense because their stopgap card was falling behind Ferrari more and more and the investment being made into the 18 was growing and growing the team would go back to power card in France for yet another testing session with Alexander behind the wheel and things wouldn't get any better somehow he would go on in one testing session to have not one not two but three completely separate full brake failures thankfully unlike the floor Fiasco McLaren did actually figure out why the brakes were failing as often as they were and it turns out that due to the engine being located so low and everything being packed in so tight when the engine would blow it would just take everything else out with it and because it was so prone to over came from the bad cooling package and because everything was packed in so tight it blew up a lot this meant that every time the engine overheated in blue Alexander's foot would just go straight to the floor because brake lines were getting torn to shreds along with everything else in the engine bay still McLaren were not going to give up especially with Kimi raikkonen losing the championship lead to Michael Schumacher after the Canadian Grand Prix for the next test I decided to give their card to their actual race drivers David and Kimmy to test it would be the mp418's last chance to prove that it wasn't the suicide machine that the media was starting to say that it was I would imagine that Alexander was pretty happy to be out of the mp418 seeing that it tried to kill him so many times but uh wouldn't it be his last time but by this point it certainly didn't seem like the car was going to be the Savior that McLaren needed so badly but the test went on with David and Kimmy Michael was beginning to pull away with the championship by this point McLaren was losing their chance to be able to bring her fight to Ferrari the old car that they've been running was as fast as it could possibly be without risking reliability and the f2003 was only getting faster clearing needed this card work they needed the investment to be worth something they needed to get results the team sent the mp418 to Catalunya in Spain to get the driver's inputs and I'll keep this short David koth test wasn't terrible it didn't split in half it didn't catch on fire the brakes didn't fail it seemed fine maybe even good but when Cameo was taking the car out for some laps and he was going through the very fast at the time final corner he had an accident we don't know much about it nobody does besides the team and obviously Kimmy himself but the team blamed Kimmy and this obviously made him very upset he swore up and down that he had nothing to do with the accident that it wasn't his fault but the team just stuck to the script and said that it was driver error with the reputation the car was quickly building many fans as well as those in the media were skeptical that it was actually Kimmy's fault especially because the final corner of Barcelona wasn't hard it was just a normal Corner a corner that people take without incident all the time but while we can never know exactly what happened with that accident that day it certainly wasn't looking good for the car after what was supposed to be its final outing by this point everybody was waiting for the announcement that McLaren was putting the mp418 on the Shelf to be completely forgotten about it was getting too late in the season they had made significant investment put so much time and resources and work into making the car work the way that they believed it could and the way that they said that it would but it just wasn't happening and if it hadn't happened yet then it probably just wasn't going to still the team would give the car one last chance at Silverstone they put Alexander behind the wheel yet again to see what he could make of it from his 2016 McLaren and me article and I quote then I had a day at Silverstone three times I lost the left front wheel in beckets and maggots because the loads were so high that it opened up the wheel on the first left-hander and in the second left-hander the wheel completely fell off then I had a brake failure at a slow Corner which was good because I hopped across the gravel bed in Grass to make it back they repaired the cars so that we had to do one more run and sent me out anyways and in Bridge Corner the rear suspension completely collapsed I had a big impact and the car was in two pieces again I walked back to the garage took out my phone called the team boss and said I'm sorry I don't want to drive this car anymore by that time no race driver wanted to drive the car and that was the last meter that the mp418 ever drove it was over that test in Silverstone was the nail in the coffin for the car that McLaren had put everything on and you want to know something when it was all said and done in 2003 Kimmy would end up finishing only two points behind Michael Schumacher two points stages put all the resources that they dumped into the 18 and and instead put it on the 17d they surely could have made up that difference and kimurikoden would be the 2003 Champion surely they could have gotten just a little bit more out of that card we're talking a two-point difference but these are things that we can never know and we're only left to speculate what if the 18 was reliable what if they had tried racing it in an official session how would it stack up with the Revolutionary transmission of held up probably not because I was also very prone to overheating but still the mp418 was confined to the pages of History never having entered an official Formula One event but still taking up one of McLaren's number designations meaning that the brand new 2004 car would be named the MP4 at 19 making the mp418 the Forgotten McLaren

Channel: JonnyF1

Views: 13,910

Keywords: formula 1, f1, 2003 f1 season, 2003 mclaren mp4-18, the forgotten mclaren

Id: e3SvLSsF4io

Length: 14min 0sec (840 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 10 2023