How Mclaren held off Williams
As the Ferrari challenge faltered, Mclaren had to fight furiously to defy the technological might of Williams and take the final title for a manual-transmission F1 car
In the years immediately succeeding its whitewash of the 1988 season, Mclaren was forced to cope with a resurgent Ferrari as it sought to extend its dominance into the next decade of Formula 1. The exodus of Alain Prost and designer Steve Nichols from Mclaren to Maranello helped Ferrari become a potent force at the sharp end of the field, and Prost had the tools to battle valiantly against long-time sparring partner Ayrton Senna for 1990’s championship honours, albeit unsuccessfully. Then, in 1991, Mclaren had to contend with the technological might of Williams and its FW14.
As Mclaren’s influences cross-pollinated into Ferrari’s design with the transfer of Prost and Nichols, the reverse applied for 1991 as Ferrari aerodynamicist Henri Durand joined Mclaren for the new season. Continuity was retained on the chassis side as Neil Oatley continued to lead the design of the monocoque, while Durand brought some of his Ferrari experience with him and sought about freshening up the Mclaren package, which was bordering on completion by the time he joined.
Although the key areas around the monocoque had been defined under
Mike Gascoyne, who had been leading the aero development as a continuation of the previous year’s MP4/5B, Durand tapped into his Ferrari knowledge and made a few changes – firstly to the sidepods, which were made taller.
“When Mike Gascoyne decided to go to Tyrrell, I was really given a free hand,” recalls Durand. “I looked at this project and it was not consistent with my experience. My experience was that low sidepods doesn’t bring anything to you – if anything the opposite, because it forces you in a corner and then you are blind, you are obliged to put in a lot of external flow.
“So, I decided to go with a high sidepod, which was more than a continuation of my Ferrari experience. It was shorter because the regulation was changing, and we had the front-wing endplate rising by 25mm instead of being level. Along the sidepod it would have been harder to actually get efficient front downforce because of the blockage of the sidepod so I’d move it shorter, and then try to get as much internal flow as possible.
“If you look at the MP4/5 and the philosophy that they had, it was a big rear wing, external flow. The engine cover was trying to make the rear wing as isolated as possible. The MP4/6 was effectively trying to enhance the communication between the floor and the rear wing. We had wings, which were smaller in size but more cambered and then trying to effectively
move the change of direction as far back as possible – a similar philosophy at Ferrari I’d done before, and that Williams and Tyrrell were doing.”
Honda also broke from tradition and elected to produce an all-new V12 for the 1991 season, perhaps caught by the allure of the extra horsepower and better balance that a well-designed 12-cylinder engine could deliver. Honda closed the V-angle to 60 degrees to further bring the engine towards a perfectly balanced state, with the firing order ensuring the absence of vibrations. The V10 was still in service as a customer engine for the Tyrrell team, but the 1990-spec engines were now passed over to Honda offshoot Mugen to prepare.
Both Senna and Gerhard Berger were somewhat unimpressed with the initial versions of the V12, feeling that there was little improvement in terms of power over the previous season’s V10. Although Senna had turned in some testing laps in a V12-powered mule car in the second half of 1990, his impressions of the Honda engine at the start of 1991 were that there was “not enough progress and not enough power”.
“The package was not as good as the 10-cylinder, and that’s what we were complaining about, Ayrton and myself,” recalls Berger, who also had experience of Ferrari’s V12 from 1989. “It wasn’t really a step forward from a lap time point.
“When I came to Honda I said, ‘Well, I feel like the V10 is a bit dull compared to the 12-cylinder Ferrari’. But in general the package was quite good. The top was good, the throttle response was good, the weight of the engine was good, so it was
“The package was notas good as the V10. Not really a step forward”
a better engine, and I loved it. When it comes to the switch to the 12-cylinder I found myself again like it was at Ferrari, where the top end was quite impressive, but you know, the torque, everything was missing a little bit.”
Although the new engine was considerably more thirsty than the V10, it was reasonably reliable thanks to an extensive testing programme. Honda had been putting the
V12 through its paces for some time in the back of a Mclaren MP4/5C mule car back in the days when testing was unlimited, and test driver Allan Mcnish racked up the miles for Honda’s engineers.
The new car was also mechanically sound. The chassis was stiffer thanks to advances in carbonfibre technology by partner Hercules Aerospace, boasting more torsional rigidity. Durand’s aero changes had ladled more downforce into the Mclaren and reduced the overall sensitivity of the aerodynamic package. A thinner, pointier nose housed a redefined suspension package, where the top-mounted rockers and dampers gave way to a pushrod layout at the front.
“The car was pretty good,” says Durand. “But we saw immediately that Williams would be a competitor – they were way ahead of the game.”
As the season began at Phoenix, perhaps Mclaren had expected Williams to take charge on the US city streets. But Senna surged to pole by 1.1 seconds over Prost, having worked late into the night to find extra performance from his car and toyed with the set-up to find more traction on corner exit. He was troubled by brake cooling issues during the race, but marched to victory despite finding his car “difficult” to drive, while Berger was eliminated mid-race with fuel pressure problems.
Mclaren continued to steal an early march, as Senna followed up his win at Phoenix with victories at Interlagos, Imola and Monaco. That win in Brazil was particularly gruelling for Senna, who had to be lifted out of his car at the end owing to
the effort required to drive the final 10 laps of the race in sixth gear. That said, Williams’s initial unreliability came to help Mclaren too, as Mansell was catching Senna at a considerable rate of knots until his own gearbox broke and seized the rear axle, putting the British driver out of the race.
Senna then struggled with some oilpressure troubles at the San Marino GP but, despite the rapidly chasing Berger hunting him down, Senna held on to win and extend his championship advantage as Mansell collided with Martin Brundle at the start of the race. After Monaco, where Senna roared to victory, the season started to become more difficult as
Williams continued to dial in its car.
Durand says the fifth round in Canada was an “eye-opener” as Riccardo Patrese and Mansell locked out the front row, with Mansell only failing to chalk up victory as the revs dropped and the Williams’s gear barrel got stuck on the last lap. Patrese and Mansell then dominated in Mexico, grabbing a 1-2 finish, with Senna almost a minute down on the pair in third.
Then the pendulum swung in Williams’s favour even more as Mansell cantered to three wins in a row in France, Britain and Germany – Mansell led every lap at Silverstone as Senna ran out of fuel on the final lap while in second. Durand explains that at Silverstone, Senna was running light to counter a slightly heavy car, and that Mclaren and Shell may have miscalculated. Senna ran out of fuel again at Hockenheim while running fourth, as Mansell cruised to another dominant victory.
In order to make up for the V12’s shaky start, Honda had been hard at work trying to find more power and had offered two different specifications mid-season: one for Imola and a short-stroke version for
Silverstone, while Mclaren undertook a weight-saving programme. Having briefly tested a semi-automatic transmission at the Hungaroring – he spun after four practice laps – Senna reverted to the regular manual car and took pole by 1.2s over Patrese, keeping the chasing Mansell in check to break Mclaren’s five-race victory drought.
Senna struggled through an attritional Belgian GP with an ailing gearbox to claim a second win on the bounce, as Mansell suffered electrical issues. By now, Senna was 22 points ahead in the championship standings. Then Williams hit back again.
“Clearly the big eye-opener was Spain, where Mansell overtook Ayrton and it was clear,” says Durand. “There is a famous image when you see them on the straight with sparks; it’s a beautiful image where Mansell overtakes him. It was so clear, it was an eye-opener, but it was all hands on deck for the whole year.”
Mclaren got everything together for
Japan to throw its all into securing the title. The MP4/6 had new front and rear wings along with a special Suzuka engine for Honda to flex its muscles at home. Berger took pole and held it, while Senna kept second from Mansell and absorbed every blow that the Williams driver sent his way in the early stages, until Mansell went off at the first corner of lap 10 and put the title beyond doubt.
Durand remembers the MP4/6 fondly, but also remembers that the Italian media accused him of making a Ferrari copy when the 1991 Mclaren was unveiled. He gives short shrift to those accusations.
“The MP4/6 was not a copy of the Ferrari – it was better than the Ferrari!” And for the crucial parts of 1991, the MP4/6 – the last V12-engined and manual-transmission car to win the F1 title – was also better than the more advanced Williams.
“Clearly the big eyeopener was Spain, where Mansell overtook Ayrton”