McLaren "super-impatient" for F1 facility upgrades

McLaren

McLaren "super-impatient" for F1 facility upgrades

McLaren hopes to open its new wind tunnel in 2022

Sam Hall

Sunday 15 August 2021 11:00

McLaren is "super-impatient" to benefit from upgraded facilities with a new wind tunnel slated for completion in 2022.

Although McLaren was able to complete upgrades to its Computational Fluid Dynamics [CFD] technology ahead of the implementation of F1's cost cap, work is ongoing with a number of infrastructure upgrades.

Of particular note is the construction of a new wind tunnel that would allow the team to move away from the ex-Toyota facility it currently uses in Cologne.

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"We're all impatient," said technical director James Key. "I think there's been some really positive investment in our facilities.

"Even last year, when there was uncertainty around, we still committed to things that we could squeeze into the year before the cars got kicked in. There's a huge amount of positivity about all these projects.

"I think when you know you're a little bit behind or out-of-date with a facility, you try and compensate to a certain extent, and everyone has done a great job of that.

"The simulator we used was, I think, the first in Formula One, although it's been modified and updated since then.

"It's still constrained by being a generation zero effectively, by way of example.

"Being able to build a new one from scratch with new technologies will bring this bang up-to-date with the data we want to generate, the understanding that we want to gain from that."

Although it is expected the wind tunnel will be completed in 2022, McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown has stated the benefits of this are unlikely to be felt until 2024 as this would be the first car designed exclusively in the facility.

It's a great facility at Toyota," continued Key.

"It is serving with us incredibly well, but we know that facilities built much more recently have been built with the benefit of the technologies available at the time.

"We are missing that for sure, so we're compensating as best we can, but we're definitely missing some of that more refined data or knowledge and information that we would get otherwise.

"Super impatient to get that bit of information on helping us take the next step."