McLaren Formula 1 team irony, many years raced in F1 but yet to build its' own engines like Scuderia Ferrari did

[mwillems]

McLaren F1 Team raced in Formula 1 since 1966 until present but ironically McLaren never intend to build its' own in-house F1 engines like Scuderia Ferrari did.

Very good point!

One would have thought it would be relatively trivial for McLaren to reverse engineer their own Cosworth DFV engines in the 1970's...? Of course, at the time McLaren were not a road car manufacturer, and even the road car manufacturer Lotus was not building their own engines (indeed receiving Cosworths for free, as works Ford engines!).

I guess given the both low price and high competitiveness of the Cosworth engine and Hewland gearbox, there was little incentive for garagistes to make their own engine and gearbox? (Despite the loss of prestige from this decision?)

However, garaiste teams seemed more interested in winning than prestige, with many garaistes having rudimentary motor homes, factories and transporters compared to the elite, prestigious continental teams such as Scuderia Ferrari and Renault...

It is bizarre that despite the loss of face to British garagistes, Mercedes Benz and Alpine, proudly German and French marques, find it necessary to build their Formula One race cars in England to this day!

I think that England has a strong F1 supply chain that doesn't so much exist elsewhere. English is also a very common second language and since the teams buy out existing infrastructure, such as Brawn, everything is in place already. I don't think "face" comes in to it much.

[Jolle]

McLaren F1 Team raced in Formula 1 since 1966 until present but ironically McLaren never intend to build its' own in-house F1 engines like Scuderia Ferrari did.

Very good point!

One would have thought it would be relatively trivial for McLaren to reverse engineer their own Cosworth DFV engines in the 1970's...? Of course, at the time McLaren were not a road car manufacturer, and even the road car manufacturer Lotus was not building their own engines (indeed receiving Cosworths for free, as works Ford engines!).

I guess given the both low price and high competitiveness of the Cosworth engine and Hewland gearbox, there was little incentive for garagistes to make their own engine and gearbox? (Despite the loss of prestige from this decision?)

However, garaiste teams seemed more interested in winning than prestige, with many garaistes having rudimentary motor homes, factories and transporters compared to the elite, prestigious continental teams such as Scuderia Ferrari and Renault...

It is bizarre that despite the loss of face to British garagistes, Mercedes Benz and Alpine, proudly German and French marques, find it necessary to build their Formula One race cars in England to this day!

I think that England has a strong F1 supply chain that doesn't so much exist elsewhere. English is also a very common second language and since the teams buy out existing infrastructure, such as Brawn, everything is in place already. I don't think "face" comes in to it much.

Not just F1, before Indycar went spec series for instance, most of the cars were designed and build in England, cars like March, Swift, Reynard, Lola... Kudo's to Dalara to break this British domination

[Just_a_fan]

McLaren F1 Team raced in Formula 1 since 1966 until present but ironically McLaren never intend to build its' own in-house F1 engines like Scuderia Ferrari did.

Very good point!

One would have thought it would be relatively trivial for McLaren to reverse engineer their own Cosworth DFV engines in the 1970's...? Of course, at the time McLaren were not a road car manufacturer, and even the road car manufacturer Lotus was not building their own engines (indeed receiving Cosworths for free, as works Ford engines!).

I guess given the both low price and high competitiveness of the Cosworth engine and Hewland gearbox, there was little incentive for garagistes to make their own engine and gearbox? (Despite the loss of prestige from this decision?)

However, garaiste teams seemed more interested in winning than prestige, with many garaistes having rudimentary motor homes, factories and transporters compared to the elite, prestigious continental teams such as Scuderia Ferrari and Renault...

It is bizarre that despite the loss of face to British garagistes, Mercedes Benz and Alpine, proudly German and French marques, find it necessary to build their Formula One race cars in England to this day!

The point of the sport is to win. No-one gets any points for nice motor homes.

And those oh-so-poor British teams with no prestige have won the majority of titles - 33 compared to 31 for the non-British teams. And that's being generous and calling the Mercedes and RedBull teams "non-British", even though both are effectively British as they're both companies registered in the UK and fully situated in the UK.

[Just_a_fan]

Very good point!

One would have thought it would be relatively trivial for McLaren to reverse engineer their own Cosworth DFV engines in the 1970's...? Of course, at the time McLaren were not a road car manufacturer, and even the road car manufacturer Lotus was not building their own engines (indeed receiving Cosworths for free, as works Ford engines!).

I guess given the both low price and high competitiveness of the Cosworth engine and Hewland gearbox, there was little incentive for garagistes to make their own engine and gearbox? (Despite the loss of prestige from this decision?)

However, garaiste teams seemed more interested in winning than prestige, with many garaistes having rudimentary motor homes, factories and transporters compared to the elite, prestigious continental teams such as Scuderia Ferrari and Renault...

It is bizarre that despite the loss of face to British garagistes, Mercedes Benz and Alpine, proudly German and French marques, find it necessary to build their Formula One race cars in England to this day!

I think that England has a strong F1 supply chain that doesn't so much exist elsewhere. English is also a very common second language and since the teams buy out existing infrastructure, such as Brawn, everything is in place already. I don't think "face" comes in to it much.

Not just F1, before Indycar went spec series for instance, most of the cars were designed and build in England, cars like March, Swift, Reynard, Lola... Kudo's to Dalara to break this British domination

And famous US sports cars started out as British designs. The Cobra and GT40 for example - the AC Ace and the Lola Mk 6.

I guess the US had it's own unique motor sport such as drag racing and ovals, where the Europeans developed more twisty racing on roads and then, post War, on circuits formed from old airfields - many British tracks are based on the perimeter tracks of WW2 airfields. So coming to the UK to look for ways to take on Ferrari at Le Mans made sense.

[mwillems]

I didn't realise about the lola and the gt40, although I think that by the time the Mk4 was eelsased the lola was not really there in spirit any more

Between the Cobra and the GT40 stands Shelby, I imagine that's why you gave those examples. Shelby joined after the initial car was built though, if I'm not mistaken.

[Jolle]

I didn't realise about the lola and the gt40, although I think that by the time the Mk4 was eelsased the lola was not really there in spirit any more

Between the Cobra and the GT40 stands Shelby, I imagine that's why you gave those examples. Shelby joined after the initial car was built though, if I'm not mistaken.

Not just based, but build and designed by Lola in Slough, UK (where the original “The Office” was set)

[AtlasZX]

McLaren F1 Team raced in Formula 1 since 1966 until present but ironically McLaren never intend to build its' own in-house F1 engines like Scuderia Ferrari did.

Please tell me the real reasons!

Alfa Romeo (Stellantis) is a huge corporation with all the abilities to develop an F1 engine for Sauber, still, they preferred to run with customer Ferrari Power Units bcs developing a P.U. is super-expensive and ofter took years to develop a competitive one.
McLaren is a way smaller company compared to Stellantis.

[Jolle]

McLaren F1 Team raced in Formula 1 since 1966 until present but ironically McLaren never intend to build its' own in-house F1 engines like Scuderia Ferrari did.

Please tell me the real reasons!

Alfa Romeo (Stellantis) is a huge corporation with all the abilities to develop an F1 engine for Sauber, still, they preferred to run with customer Ferrari Power Units bcs developing a P.U. is super-expensive and ofter took years to develop a competitive one.
McLaren is a way smaller company compared to Stellantis.

Although since a couple of years Ferrari is not directly part of the group where Alfa is part of, they are still both (or all) controlled by the Angelli family in the Exor NV group.

[Greg Locock]

Lotus makes production engines at Hethel but AFAIK always relied on other people to make the F1 engines.

[taperoo2k]

McLaren F1 Team raced in Formula 1 since 1966 until present but ironically McLaren never intend to build its' own in-house F1 engines like Scuderia Ferrari did.

Please tell me the real reasons!

Alfa Romeo (Stellantis) is a huge corporation with all the abilities to develop an F1 engine for Sauber, still, they preferred to run with customer Ferrari Power Units bcs developing a P.U. is super-expensive and ofter took years to develop a competitive one.
McLaren is a way smaller company compared to Stellantis.

Although since a couple of years Ferrari is not directly part of the group where Alfa is part of, they are still both (or all) controlled by the Angelli family in the Exor NV group.

There is little point in spending a ton of money on building an Alfa Romeo power unit when you've got a Ferrari Power Unit fully developed and available. It's more about promoting the Alfa brand in F1 than it being about Alfa being a PU manufacturer.

McLaren could develop a power unit inhouse, but what would be the point ? They are better off with a PU supply deal with Mercedes at this point in time and when the PU regulations change ? Try to secure a works deal with a new manufacturer that might be entering the sport. As for Ferrari ? It's a lot older than McLaren and evolved from Enzo Ferrari producing racing cars for gentlemen into the beast it is today. McLaren has been since it's inception a racing team above all else, the only reason McLaren has turned into a luxury sports car manufacturer was due to Ron Dennis ambition. Did that extend to building it's own engines for F1 ? No. Hence the Honda deal.

[vorticism]

And, it takes an engineering behemoth like Mercedes to make this formula work. Consider how Renault and Ferrari struggled with it for years. And Cosworth of course said no thank you.

The turbo hybrid engine formula was a mistake. No one wants to build out that mess of regs, and who can blame them?

[Darth-Piekus]

Mclaren was and is a racing team. Ron Dennis's ambition in the mid 90s turned it into a road car company also. Ferrari however was a road car company that was building cars just like Mercedes from 1947 so I would expect they would have a long head start on building an engine. Maybe Mclaren creates their own engine in the future. Who knows.

[S E C T I O]

Enzo Ferrari produced street cars to finance racing, others did racing to better sell their street cars.However, it is a glorious factory that deserves to always fight for the top, even if building the engine itself is not in its DNA.

[Mansell89]

Nice work Lando and Danny- p3 and p6 well ahead of my wildest expectations so very well done.

[JordanMugen]

Mclaren was and is a racing team. Ron Dennis's ambition in the mid 90s turned it into a road car company also.

Bruce McLaren used to sell a lot of customer racing cars too though (likewise Brabham and Lotus, and of course Ferrari), they had production runs of 20+ cars of some of the McLaren customer sports racing cars... construction mostly outsourced though but using McLaren patterns.