McLaren used to have their own wind tunnel facility when Bernie Collins joined the team back in 2009. However, in her book titled, ‘How to Win a Grand Prix: From Pit Lane to Podium – the Inside Track’, she revealed that for over a decade, from 2010 to 2023, the team used Toyota’s wind tunnel in Germany instead of its own.
Collins explained that the team’s old wind tunnel was specifically designed for scale models and as Formula 1 cars grew larger over time, McLaren’s wind tunnel could no longer provide reliable data. The walls and roof of the tunnel caused disturbances that affected the aerodynamic readings, making the facility less effective for testing.
By 2010, McLaren had little choice but to look elsewhere for a better solution. As Collins noted, “Many of the teams then found they had little option but to travel to Germany to use the Toyota facility with its full-size tunnel.” However, using another team’s wind tunnel came with its own set of challenges.
Collins described how moving a car model to a different location could cause problems. “It can be detrimental to build a model and move it some distance for testing in someone else’s wind tunnel. You can never be sure of the tunnel’s condition, or when it was last calibrated,” she said.
Bernie Collins explains in her book ‘How to Win a Grand Prix: From Pit Lane to Podium – the Inside Track’ why McLaren were forced to use Toyota’s wind tunnel starting in 2010.#Formula1 #McLaren was pic.twitter.com/yvlzRWSinN
— Formula World (@F1_Grand_Prix) September 8, 2024
She also highlighted the high costs involved in maintaining one’s own wind tunnel, adding, “Building and running a full-size wind tunnel is a massive expense.” However, McLaren eventually decided to build their own wind tunnel.
McLaren’s new state-of-the-art wind tunnel
Although McLaren had planned to upgrade its wind tunnel for a long time, it did not come to pass until 2019 when construction began on a new, state-of-the-art facility. The new facility finally became operational in October 2023, ending the team’s dependency on Toyota.
However, the construction of the new facility came with its own set of challenges with limited space being one of the key issues for McLaren. The original wind tunnel had been designed to work with a 50% scale model of their car and when McLaren moved to a 60% scale model to improve testing accuracy, it made the models too large for the old tunnel.
Coming online . We took Lando and Oscar on a tour of our new state-of-the-art wind tunnel housed at the McLaren Technology Centre.
Another step forward in our mission back to the front. pic.twitter.com/FOK3LN5KFj
— McLaren (@McLarenF1) March 28, 2023
Christian Schramm, McLaren’s Director of R&D and Technology, explained the space limitations they faced during the construction of the new tunnel. “Due to the space restrictions, the tunnel is as high and as wide as it can possibly be,” Schramm said. “That meant that our designs had to be very specific, which is more time-consuming.”
Working with such limited space required careful planning and precise engineering to fit all necessary components. The tunnel had to be as large as the available space allowed, and every part was designed to make the most of the limited area.
