Tah-dah!

From the front, McLaren's 2010 challenger doesn't seem too different from the 2009 car.  The nose is higher, but the betting line is that that'll be the norm this season (with the wider front tires last year, the lower nose allowed more ballast to be placed up front.  This season's narrower tires will require a better balance all-round, so the high nose won't hinder anything).

It's when you look at the side view, though, that you realize that we're looking at rolling artwork as much as high-speed racer...



Baby!  *wolf whistle*  Lots of visible changes here, but none more obvious than that fin.  Look at last year's MP4-24 in comparison:

The new chassis' sidepods sweep down towards the rear tires, quite unlike last year's.  We're also seeing the return of bargeboards (under the "a" in "algo"), which I thought were still illegal, but I guess not. But wow, that fin just dominates the appearance of the car, and it's a nice look to my eyes.  What'll it do?  Cripes, I dunno, and I'm not sure the McLaren engineers know either, but we'll find out soon.

The area behind the cockpit is more cylindrical in look now, no doubt because of the larger fuel bladder requirements.  The air intakes are practically rectangular this year, and higher off the ground... they must have a lot of confidence in their cooling system, because that positioning might cause some problems otherwise: they're smaller, and there's gonna be a lot of disturbed air coming off the front tires.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:54 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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