For the chassis, a key aerodynamic balance shift has been the aim. To achieve this, several specific areas have been important to bring this about. As is the case with every F1 team, McLaren wants a car that has lots of downforce for very little drag – otherwise known as aero efficiency. This allows the car to be fast in the corners and not be slowed by drag on the straights.

To do this, the rear of the car has to work better. This allows a smaller rear wing to be run, which reduces the drag. There are two ways to achieve this and McLaren has, admittedly, tackled both. Firstly, raising the rear of the car – This is a counter intuitive process, as most racers on road and track want a low rear end. However, in F1 this means a more powerful underfloor, creating downforce from the low pressure under the car, in turn creating very little drag in the process.

The second part of this process is the airflow hitting the rear end. This is wholly influenced by the front end of the car – largely the front wing, front brake ducts and turning vanes. These increasingly complex surfaces aren’t used to make more grip at the front of the car, but to shape the airflow heading towards the rear. Again, making the rear end work better reduces the need for a larger rear wing and that, in itself, further reduces drag.

Honda’s challenge has been to match its rivals for power and fuel efficiencies. Starting from a long way back in 2015, the Honda PU is still behind on peak power, but not as far as it might appear. A key comment during a technical director press conference suggested the power unit’s contribution to lap time varies only by 0.3 seconds.

In F1 terms, this equates to 30hp. This isn’t a huge deficit, nor one which cannot be bridged with a single update.Nevertheless, there have been races this season where the McLaren-Honda still appears to lack far more than a few tenths of horsepower. This is where Honda are about to catch up. In a race, the Honda engine currently uses too much fuel relative to its rivals, who have applied highly advanced lean burn combustion solutions, which allows the limited fuel to produce maximum horsepower throughout the race.With a conventional combustion set up, the Honda cannot match this from good engineering alone, so a step change is required in the combustion design.

For Ferrari and Mercedes, this is a process known as pre-chamber ignition, whereby a small chamber is formed inside the cylinder head between the spark plug and the main combustion chamber. This gets filled with a rich fuel mixture. The main combustion chamber gets filled with only a very weak fuel air mix, which would be hard to ignite with a conventional spark plug.

When the spark plug ignites the fuel in the pre-chamber, the resulting flame vents through small holes into the main combustion chamber, which then burns the weak fuel mix easily. This creates a long power stroke, despite the largely weak fuel mix.Such technology requires a very different cylinder head architecture, along with special fuel injectors, spark plugs and – critically – special fuel, to be able to react to the unusual combustion process.

How rake returned

Scalabroni suggests that this begins with a key aero structure 250mm from the car's centreline, where the neutral section of the front wing terminates and the flapped section begins.This surface juncture creates pressure gradients that collide, creating a highly energetic vortex (Y250) that's directed down the car, past various other aerodynamic devices that control its direction and vorticity.This helps to understand how the RB12 is such a phenomenal car through the corners, with downforce aplenty. But it doesn't explain how the team are getting the best from the car on the straights given their power unit deficit to the other teams at circuits they'd ordinarily struggle. This is where Enrique proposes that the team have elected to run with a more softly sprung rear end than is normally the case.Ordinarily, he said, a team would use around 1500lsprings to maintain aero stability, whilst he'd argue that the RB12 is using around 600lb.

This means that it can achieve the optimum rake through the corners but once on a straight, the downforce being generated continues to pull the rear of the car down toward the ground, changing the car's attitude and, with it, the loaded wing elements. This reduces the downforce and drag it generate, boosting top speed.

"You always hope for a lot, because it's Honda's home grand prix - but it's not a good circuit for us," Button said."It's got some long straights, got a lot of mid-high-speed corners without braking - heavy braking - which is a weakness of ours."We're very strong with heavy braking corners and low-speed corners, but not in the corners when you're not braking heavily. Floor not close to the ground, it doesn't work as well.

McLaren and Honda have made huge strides this season but they'll have known ahead of time that the Japanese GP, the engine manufacturer's home race, was going to be a difficult weekend for the team.

The MP4-31 is conceptually very similar to the current and previous Red Bull cars, such is Peter Prodromou's influence on the aerodynamic direction it is taking.

This is by no means a bad thing, with the RB12 still identified as one of the strongest chassis' in the field.

However, Suzuka's marriage of mid-high speed corners and heavy braking zones did not bode well for the way in which the RA616H makes and uses its power, putting their aero philosophy out of kilter too.

Jenson Button even made reference to it in an interview: "We're very strong with heavy braking corners and low-speed corners, but not in the corners when you're not braking heavily. Floor not close to the ground, it doesn't work as well."

The McLaren driver clearly alluded to the steep rake angle that the MP4-31 is run at and the way in which the car makes downforce from the front wing to the elevated diffuser.

Characteristically then, the circuit just didn't suit the team, but whilst the result will be difficult to swallow, it didn't stop it looking forward.


McLaren has consistently altered its front wing throughout the season as it's gone in search of extra performance, and whilst this iteration of the wing has been in play since Singapore, its complexity is worth our focus nonetheless.

One of the main areas of focus has been the flap tips, which now have slots placed halfway up their surface to double up the number of tips that can influence the air (arrows).

Each tip will shed a vortex, which is being used to control the shape of the main Y250 vortex that is created from the mainplane below. Initially these slots were just applied to the blunt edges of the flap, (see above) and then the changes were made in the inset. However, more recently this concept has evolved, with the slots following the a revised curvature of the flap.

You'll also note how the footplate inside the endplate has been increased in width (depicted by the blue line), changing the way in which airflow moves under the mainplane through the arc and then spills out around the front tyre.

You'll note that unlike the rest of the grid, who seem to instantly direct their arched or tunnel section outward, the new McLaren concept sees them direct the first few flaps of the arched section inward, before it funnels outward.

Seeing as most teams now seem to have at least one hand on their 2017 design philosophies, it makes you wonder if this is McLaren looking to get ahead of that curve and understand a concept it would like to carry over whilst also taking advantage of any performance benefits it can bring them this season.