surely the nex leyend (McLaren F1>Mercedes SLR McLaren)
erik_kimba
08-13-2004, 06:34 PM
The Road to Perfection - The full story of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren's development
THE ROAD TO PERFECTION
The Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren has evolved from a concept that envisaged the production of the ultimate road car in terms of performance, safety, comfort and design. Only Mercedes-Benz and McLaren could ever have turned that dream into reality. This is the full story of the car’s development.
A new class of top-level, high-performance motoring has been perfected. Forget the ‘supercar’ concept of the late 20th century, for it’s now old hat. The Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren offers far broader scope for the future, for here we have a true ‘hypercar’ – and, most uniquely, the first to be made generally available in genuine series production.
Created in unique partnership by DaimlerChrysler and McLaren Cars, this is the ultimate high-performance, two-seater Grand Touring car – a machine which oozes quality in every department. It has been designed and developed to satisfy every possible criteria, offering a blend of exceptional performance and handling with supreme comfort, all clothed beneath strikingly good looks and magisterial presence. All the while, woven through, are major advances in inherent standards of both active and passive safety.
“This is the ultimate 200 percent car,” says the McLaren Automotive Division’s Managing Director, Antony Sheriff. “It offers 100 percent of Mercedes-Benz’s comfort and quality, with 100 percent of our Formula 1-bred performance. Neither aspect has been allowed to compromise the other.
“Above all, the critical requirement throughout was to produce a car of unimpeachable comfort and quality, which – on demand – could fulfil every need that the most enthusiastic driver could place upon it. It’s a tough challenge, but the finished product improves on every significant target set by the original programme.”
In many ways, the coming together of McLaren and Mercedes-Benz to build the ultimate car seems almost pre-ordained. Their long, successful collaboration in Formula 1 over the past nine years has netted two Drivers’ World Championships and one Constructors’ World Championship to add to McLaren’s already impressive Formula 1 record and Mercedes-Benz’s historical success from the early 1950s.
During that time, both companies have also set new standards on the road – Mercedes-Benz, from its days as an automotive pioneer at the start of the 20th century to its pace-setting range of vehicles today, and McLaren with what many in the motoring industry still believe is the finest ever road-going sportscar, the McLaren F1.
When Mercedes-Benz first envisaged producing an advanced car that could fulfil the heritage of the SLR coupés which dominated the 1955 Sportscar World Championship, who better could they have chosen as a partner than McLaren? Since that collaboration was born in July 1999, it has produced, in just four years, an extraordinary end product in the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren and initiated or accelerated development of numerous, pioneering, high-tech manufacturing processes and complex on-board car systems.
“From the project’s very inception, the desire to set new standards for design, construction and production has been inherent,” says Antony Sheriff.
McLaren Cars has been responsible for the overall packaging, body design, suspension, aerodynamics and handling, while Mercedes-Benz’s AMG tuning department has built an engine and transmission package to fulfil the exacting performance demands. Mercedes-Benz’s Stuttgart styling department has assumed prime responsibility for the car’s appearance, accommodating packaging and cooling requirements as they have emerged.
“There is no other generic European car company which could conceive, design, develop and put into production within four years a product as advanced and innovative as this,” Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Operations Director Ola Källenius enthuses. “Especially not one that could create so many aspects of the project entirely in-house.”
The Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren is the world’s first series-production sportscar model to feature entirely carbon/composite bodywork and a monocoque chassis. The benefit of this hybrid monocoque/cast-alloy structure is that it has enabled the design team to achieve peerless standards of torsional rigidity and weight reduction – ideal parameters for both handling performance and economy.
And what performance. The Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren takes just 3.8 seconds to reach 100kph from a standing start, a further 6.8 seconds to reach 200kph and a total of 28.8 seconds to reach 300kph on the way to its top speed of 334kph. The 5.5-litre, 24-valve, quad-cam V8 supercharged powerplant behind this performance needs to be stunning, and certainly is so, with a peak output of 626bhp and a maximum torque of 780Nm.
The powerplant, lubricated by Mobil 1 products from Team McLaren Mercedes Technology Partner ExxonMobil, is a little technological marvel in itself, and is based on a newly-designed aluminium crankcase.
The V8’s dry-sump system, oil pumps, three-valve-per-cylinder twin-cam heads, crankshaft, con-rods and pistons are also completely new and tailor-made for this programme.
Crucially, the engine also features an induction charger module and charge-air cooler system which produces 30 percent more boost than that achieved by rival devices. The AMG-designed intelligent system which controls this – one of many such automated performance or safety features on the car – carefully restrains the devices to ensure that they are only active when needed, yet can respond in an instant when called into action.
The level of power the engine produces is stunning enough in most people’s minds, but is also a big step above what was originally imagined by McLaren Cars Technical Director Gordon Murray when he first looked at the brief for the project.
“When I did the original sums, I thought that 557bhp should be the overall target,” he explains. “AMG has far exceeded that. What’s more, the screw-compressor engine provides what you could consider to be 10-litres-worth of torque across an unprecedented rev band. You put all that into a comfortably-furnished, comprehensively well-equipped car weighing 200-300kg less than many of its market rivals and you’ve got the new Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren.”
Anyone examining the car for the first time, though, will immediately notice how remarkably far back the engine is mounted for a front-engined design. The reason for this unique position, in which the engine’s front face is virtually in line with the rear of the front tyres, is aimed at achieving perfect chassis balance – a challenge with front-engined, rear-wheel drive cars.
“It was critical to place the engine there to achieve the dynamic balance we required,” explains Gordon Murray. “Dry-sumping the engine was also critical because it permits a low overall height – good for centre of gravity, which is good for vehicle behaviour, and of course the shallow engine height is great for styling and packaging.”
The car’s transmission is equally uncompromising. Every discerning driver appreciates a quality gearchange, and the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren promises its owner a revelation with the ultra-advanced, five-speed automatic ‘Speedshift’ system. This provides three dashboard-selected programmes, with individually-selectable change speeds.
The Comfort and Sport transmission modes are automatic shift programs, while in Manual mode the five gears can be selected either using steering wheel buttons or the centreline gear lever’s Touchshift function. In this mode the driver can then choose between three gear change stages – Sport, SuperSport or Race. Ultimately, the driver can select and define their driving persona for the day – the coolest of cruisers, or a budding Kimi Räikkönen or David Coulthard.
In terms of the car’s handling and performance, from the outset it was part of the brief of the design team to achieve top figures in three key areas – agility, active safety and comfort. No merit was seen in achieving Formula 1 levels of grip and traction at the expense of comfort and ride.
The long wheelbase and wide front and rear track of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, however, combined with a double-wishbone and coil-sprung fully independent suspension that features anti-squat and dive technology, keeps the bespoke tyres produced by Team McLaren Mercedes Technology Partner Michelin in best contact with the road, whilst still meeting every comfort criteria that a discerning owner would expect from the highest-performance Mercedes-Benz.
But any great car of such uncompromising quality has to stop as well as it goes. Since the early 1980s ultra-lightweight, ultra-effective carbon brakes have featured in racing designs, but where racing offers a consistently high-temperature braking environment, everyday road car use does not.
On the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, the design team has instead adopted carbon fibre-reinforced ceramic discs, developed by Mercedes-Benz’s advanced research and development department to achieve outstanding performance, temperature-resistance and longevity bordering on immortality without the temperature deficiencies of conventional carbon brakes.
Clasped by powerful eight-pot calipers, which, thanks to the new carbon-ceramic disc material may also employ a wide range of friction-pad materials other than carbon, the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren’s brakes provide maximum deceleration of up to 1.3G – a value unsurpassed in any other series-production car.
In fact, careful attention has been paid to every area in which safety is a factor. Among the car’s multiple cutting-edge systems are Sensotronic Brake Control – a brake-by-wire electro-hydraulic braking system – and the Electronic Stability Programme, which further enhance the car’s handling.
There are automatic tyre pressure monitors, adaptive front airbags which deploy in stages depending on the severity of an accident, sidebags, belt tensioners and belt force limiters.
The automatically-deployed rear aerofoil reacts to heavy braking by extending to a 65 degree angle. Even the environment is cared for, with four catalytic converters which help the car already meet stringent European Union exhaust regulations for 2005.
One most extraordinary feature of the car’s safety system is the brake discs’ self-cleaning mode in wet weather, in which the eight caliper pistons gently clasp the pads close enough to the disc surface to peel away water film, ensuring instant optimum grip the moment application is required.
All these systems have been honed during Mercedes-Benz’s standard 300,000-kilometre programme of proving tests, which included around 12,000km of runs on the 14km-long Nordschleife circuit in Germany, and hot- and cold-weather testing in Death Valley in the United States, South Africa and the Swedish Arctic.
Neither the driver’s personal comfort or the functionality of the cockpit have been forgotten, though, and the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren’s interior has been as painstakingly developed as the rest of the car. Here, for the first time, one outside company – Johnson Controls – has manufactured and supplied the interior, hand-finished trim and furnishing of a Mercedes-Benz model.
“You’ve got all the comfort and electronic features which are offered on the Mercedes-Benz SL,” says Antony Sheriff. “From the Bose audio system to the navigation system, and the automatic headlamps which come on whenever the car enters a darkened area. And it’s all superimposed upon the style, the power, the torque and the dynamic handling of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren.
“Wherever you look through the car’s specification there’s a system or feature which breaks new ground. It’s typical of the detail thinking invested in this car that there’s some capability or some advantage of one system which combines with the next to promote even greater advantage or capability overall. It takes a very big book to describe it all!”
What more can we say? A new car class is here, and now, and in the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren the phrase ‘hypercar’ has truly been born.
Engine
Engine size 5.5-litre
Engine type M155 Supercharged V8, 90-degree vee angle
Bore / Stroke 97mm / 92mm
Compression ratio 8.8:1
Valve train Single overhead cam per bank, chain driven
Induction system Eight-butterfly system - carbon airbox/tilter
Engine block Cast aluminium
Cylinder head Cast aluminium alloy - three valves per cylinder
Flywheel None (torque converter in gearbox)
Engine management Bosch ME 2.8.1
Fuel 95 RON (RO2) unleaded (97.6-litre twin tank)
Oil Mobil 1 5W-50
Lubrication sump with separate oil tank, scavenge and pressure-fed pumps. Oil to air cooler mounted in radiator duct
Emission control Front-mounted (two per side) catalytic converters and silencers with side exit pipes
Dimensions Performance
Length 4675mm Max. Power 442KW @ 6600rpm
Width 1925mm Max. Torque 780Nm @ 3500rpm
Height 1275mm Maximum rpm 7000
Wheelbase 2700mm 0-100kph 3.8 seconds
Front Track 1638mm 0-200kph 10.6 seconds
Rear Track 1569mm 0-300kph 28.8 seconds
Max. Speed 334kph
Chassis
Front brakes 370mm diameter carbon ceramic disc brakes with eight-cylinder fixed aluminium calipers. Front brake cooling inlets in front bumper assembly.
Rear brakes 360mm diameter Carbon ceramic disc brakes with four-cylinder fixed aluminium calipers at the rear. Drum brake on rear wheels incorporated as parking brake. Rear brake-cooling inlets situated underneath vehicle.
Braking control Sensotronic Brake Control system and Electronic Stability Programme including ASR and ABS with override switch.
Transmission Mercedes NAG-V five-speed auto with reverse. Fully automatic with semi-automatic option.
Front suspension Forged aluminium double wishbone assembly, housed in die-cast aluminium uprights. High mounted anti-roll bar, coil-springs & telescopic dampers. Carry-over steel hub & bearings. Anti-dive geometry with rocker-actuated double wishbone rising rate.
Rear suspension Forged aluminium double wishbone assembly, housed in die-cast aluminium uprights, incorporates coil-springs & telescopic dampers & carry-over steel hub & bearings. Features anti-squat geometry with rocker-actuated double-wishbone rising rate.
Aerodynamics Automatic downforce enhancement, incorporating variable-position flap at the rear edge of the boot. Features two automatic and one manually-selected positions between zero when stationary and 65 degrees under heavy braking.
Steering rack Rack & pinion power-assisted. Valve optimised for maximum driver feel. Energy-absorbing upper column with bespoke intermediate and lower column.
Wheel rims Lightweight cast aluminium with five-stud fixing. (Front) 18-inch by nine-inch; (Rear) 18-inch by 11.5-inch
Tyres Bespoke ZR rating asymmetric/directional tyres developed by Michelin (Front) 245x40x18-inch; (Rear) 295x35x18-inch
Luggage capacity (Boot) 272-litres; (Interior) 46.1-litres
from mclaren.com
THE ROAD TO PERFECTION
The Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren has evolved from a concept that envisaged the production of the ultimate road car in terms of performance, safety, comfort and design. Only Mercedes-Benz and McLaren could ever have turned that dream into reality. This is the full story of the car’s development.
A new class of top-level, high-performance motoring has been perfected. Forget the ‘supercar’ concept of the late 20th century, for it’s now old hat. The Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren offers far broader scope for the future, for here we have a true ‘hypercar’ – and, most uniquely, the first to be made generally available in genuine series production.
Created in unique partnership by DaimlerChrysler and McLaren Cars, this is the ultimate high-performance, two-seater Grand Touring car – a machine which oozes quality in every department. It has been designed and developed to satisfy every possible criteria, offering a blend of exceptional performance and handling with supreme comfort, all clothed beneath strikingly good looks and magisterial presence. All the while, woven through, are major advances in inherent standards of both active and passive safety.
“This is the ultimate 200 percent car,” says the McLaren Automotive Division’s Managing Director, Antony Sheriff. “It offers 100 percent of Mercedes-Benz’s comfort and quality, with 100 percent of our Formula 1-bred performance. Neither aspect has been allowed to compromise the other.
“Above all, the critical requirement throughout was to produce a car of unimpeachable comfort and quality, which – on demand – could fulfil every need that the most enthusiastic driver could place upon it. It’s a tough challenge, but the finished product improves on every significant target set by the original programme.”
In many ways, the coming together of McLaren and Mercedes-Benz to build the ultimate car seems almost pre-ordained. Their long, successful collaboration in Formula 1 over the past nine years has netted two Drivers’ World Championships and one Constructors’ World Championship to add to McLaren’s already impressive Formula 1 record and Mercedes-Benz’s historical success from the early 1950s.
During that time, both companies have also set new standards on the road – Mercedes-Benz, from its days as an automotive pioneer at the start of the 20th century to its pace-setting range of vehicles today, and McLaren with what many in the motoring industry still believe is the finest ever road-going sportscar, the McLaren F1.
When Mercedes-Benz first envisaged producing an advanced car that could fulfil the heritage of the SLR coupés which dominated the 1955 Sportscar World Championship, who better could they have chosen as a partner than McLaren? Since that collaboration was born in July 1999, it has produced, in just four years, an extraordinary end product in the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren and initiated or accelerated development of numerous, pioneering, high-tech manufacturing processes and complex on-board car systems.
“From the project’s very inception, the desire to set new standards for design, construction and production has been inherent,” says Antony Sheriff.
McLaren Cars has been responsible for the overall packaging, body design, suspension, aerodynamics and handling, while Mercedes-Benz’s AMG tuning department has built an engine and transmission package to fulfil the exacting performance demands. Mercedes-Benz’s Stuttgart styling department has assumed prime responsibility for the car’s appearance, accommodating packaging and cooling requirements as they have emerged.
“There is no other generic European car company which could conceive, design, develop and put into production within four years a product as advanced and innovative as this,” Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Operations Director Ola Källenius enthuses. “Especially not one that could create so many aspects of the project entirely in-house.”
The Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren is the world’s first series-production sportscar model to feature entirely carbon/composite bodywork and a monocoque chassis. The benefit of this hybrid monocoque/cast-alloy structure is that it has enabled the design team to achieve peerless standards of torsional rigidity and weight reduction – ideal parameters for both handling performance and economy.
And what performance. The Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren takes just 3.8 seconds to reach 100kph from a standing start, a further 6.8 seconds to reach 200kph and a total of 28.8 seconds to reach 300kph on the way to its top speed of 334kph. The 5.5-litre, 24-valve, quad-cam V8 supercharged powerplant behind this performance needs to be stunning, and certainly is so, with a peak output of 626bhp and a maximum torque of 780Nm.
The powerplant, lubricated by Mobil 1 products from Team McLaren Mercedes Technology Partner ExxonMobil, is a little technological marvel in itself, and is based on a newly-designed aluminium crankcase.
The V8’s dry-sump system, oil pumps, three-valve-per-cylinder twin-cam heads, crankshaft, con-rods and pistons are also completely new and tailor-made for this programme.
Crucially, the engine also features an induction charger module and charge-air cooler system which produces 30 percent more boost than that achieved by rival devices. The AMG-designed intelligent system which controls this – one of many such automated performance or safety features on the car – carefully restrains the devices to ensure that they are only active when needed, yet can respond in an instant when called into action.
The level of power the engine produces is stunning enough in most people’s minds, but is also a big step above what was originally imagined by McLaren Cars Technical Director Gordon Murray when he first looked at the brief for the project.
“When I did the original sums, I thought that 557bhp should be the overall target,” he explains. “AMG has far exceeded that. What’s more, the screw-compressor engine provides what you could consider to be 10-litres-worth of torque across an unprecedented rev band. You put all that into a comfortably-furnished, comprehensively well-equipped car weighing 200-300kg less than many of its market rivals and you’ve got the new Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren.”
Anyone examining the car for the first time, though, will immediately notice how remarkably far back the engine is mounted for a front-engined design. The reason for this unique position, in which the engine’s front face is virtually in line with the rear of the front tyres, is aimed at achieving perfect chassis balance – a challenge with front-engined, rear-wheel drive cars.
“It was critical to place the engine there to achieve the dynamic balance we required,” explains Gordon Murray. “Dry-sumping the engine was also critical because it permits a low overall height – good for centre of gravity, which is good for vehicle behaviour, and of course the shallow engine height is great for styling and packaging.”
The car’s transmission is equally uncompromising. Every discerning driver appreciates a quality gearchange, and the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren promises its owner a revelation with the ultra-advanced, five-speed automatic ‘Speedshift’ system. This provides three dashboard-selected programmes, with individually-selectable change speeds.
The Comfort and Sport transmission modes are automatic shift programs, while in Manual mode the five gears can be selected either using steering wheel buttons or the centreline gear lever’s Touchshift function. In this mode the driver can then choose between three gear change stages – Sport, SuperSport or Race. Ultimately, the driver can select and define their driving persona for the day – the coolest of cruisers, or a budding Kimi Räikkönen or David Coulthard.
In terms of the car’s handling and performance, from the outset it was part of the brief of the design team to achieve top figures in three key areas – agility, active safety and comfort. No merit was seen in achieving Formula 1 levels of grip and traction at the expense of comfort and ride.
The long wheelbase and wide front and rear track of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, however, combined with a double-wishbone and coil-sprung fully independent suspension that features anti-squat and dive technology, keeps the bespoke tyres produced by Team McLaren Mercedes Technology Partner Michelin in best contact with the road, whilst still meeting every comfort criteria that a discerning owner would expect from the highest-performance Mercedes-Benz.
But any great car of such uncompromising quality has to stop as well as it goes. Since the early 1980s ultra-lightweight, ultra-effective carbon brakes have featured in racing designs, but where racing offers a consistently high-temperature braking environment, everyday road car use does not.
On the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, the design team has instead adopted carbon fibre-reinforced ceramic discs, developed by Mercedes-Benz’s advanced research and development department to achieve outstanding performance, temperature-resistance and longevity bordering on immortality without the temperature deficiencies of conventional carbon brakes.
Clasped by powerful eight-pot calipers, which, thanks to the new carbon-ceramic disc material may also employ a wide range of friction-pad materials other than carbon, the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren’s brakes provide maximum deceleration of up to 1.3G – a value unsurpassed in any other series-production car.
In fact, careful attention has been paid to every area in which safety is a factor. Among the car’s multiple cutting-edge systems are Sensotronic Brake Control – a brake-by-wire electro-hydraulic braking system – and the Electronic Stability Programme, which further enhance the car’s handling.
There are automatic tyre pressure monitors, adaptive front airbags which deploy in stages depending on the severity of an accident, sidebags, belt tensioners and belt force limiters.
The automatically-deployed rear aerofoil reacts to heavy braking by extending to a 65 degree angle. Even the environment is cared for, with four catalytic converters which help the car already meet stringent European Union exhaust regulations for 2005.
One most extraordinary feature of the car’s safety system is the brake discs’ self-cleaning mode in wet weather, in which the eight caliper pistons gently clasp the pads close enough to the disc surface to peel away water film, ensuring instant optimum grip the moment application is required.
All these systems have been honed during Mercedes-Benz’s standard 300,000-kilometre programme of proving tests, which included around 12,000km of runs on the 14km-long Nordschleife circuit in Germany, and hot- and cold-weather testing in Death Valley in the United States, South Africa and the Swedish Arctic.
Neither the driver’s personal comfort or the functionality of the cockpit have been forgotten, though, and the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren’s interior has been as painstakingly developed as the rest of the car. Here, for the first time, one outside company – Johnson Controls – has manufactured and supplied the interior, hand-finished trim and furnishing of a Mercedes-Benz model.
“You’ve got all the comfort and electronic features which are offered on the Mercedes-Benz SL,” says Antony Sheriff. “From the Bose audio system to the navigation system, and the automatic headlamps which come on whenever the car enters a darkened area. And it’s all superimposed upon the style, the power, the torque and the dynamic handling of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren.
“Wherever you look through the car’s specification there’s a system or feature which breaks new ground. It’s typical of the detail thinking invested in this car that there’s some capability or some advantage of one system which combines with the next to promote even greater advantage or capability overall. It takes a very big book to describe it all!”
What more can we say? A new car class is here, and now, and in the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren the phrase ‘hypercar’ has truly been born.
Engine
Engine size 5.5-litre
Engine type M155 Supercharged V8, 90-degree vee angle
Bore / Stroke 97mm / 92mm
Compression ratio 8.8:1
Valve train Single overhead cam per bank, chain driven
Induction system Eight-butterfly system - carbon airbox/tilter
Engine block Cast aluminium
Cylinder head Cast aluminium alloy - three valves per cylinder
Flywheel None (torque converter in gearbox)
Engine management Bosch ME 2.8.1
Fuel 95 RON (RO2) unleaded (97.6-litre twin tank)
Oil Mobil 1 5W-50
Lubrication sump with separate oil tank, scavenge and pressure-fed pumps. Oil to air cooler mounted in radiator duct
Emission control Front-mounted (two per side) catalytic converters and silencers with side exit pipes
Dimensions Performance
Length 4675mm Max. Power 442KW @ 6600rpm
Width 1925mm Max. Torque 780Nm @ 3500rpm
Height 1275mm Maximum rpm 7000
Wheelbase 2700mm 0-100kph 3.8 seconds
Front Track 1638mm 0-200kph 10.6 seconds
Rear Track 1569mm 0-300kph 28.8 seconds
Max. Speed 334kph
Chassis
Front brakes 370mm diameter carbon ceramic disc brakes with eight-cylinder fixed aluminium calipers. Front brake cooling inlets in front bumper assembly.
Rear brakes 360mm diameter Carbon ceramic disc brakes with four-cylinder fixed aluminium calipers at the rear. Drum brake on rear wheels incorporated as parking brake. Rear brake-cooling inlets situated underneath vehicle.
Braking control Sensotronic Brake Control system and Electronic Stability Programme including ASR and ABS with override switch.
Transmission Mercedes NAG-V five-speed auto with reverse. Fully automatic with semi-automatic option.
Front suspension Forged aluminium double wishbone assembly, housed in die-cast aluminium uprights. High mounted anti-roll bar, coil-springs & telescopic dampers. Carry-over steel hub & bearings. Anti-dive geometry with rocker-actuated double wishbone rising rate.
Rear suspension Forged aluminium double wishbone assembly, housed in die-cast aluminium uprights, incorporates coil-springs & telescopic dampers & carry-over steel hub & bearings. Features anti-squat geometry with rocker-actuated double-wishbone rising rate.
Aerodynamics Automatic downforce enhancement, incorporating variable-position flap at the rear edge of the boot. Features two automatic and one manually-selected positions between zero when stationary and 65 degrees under heavy braking.
Steering rack Rack & pinion power-assisted. Valve optimised for maximum driver feel. Energy-absorbing upper column with bespoke intermediate and lower column.
Wheel rims Lightweight cast aluminium with five-stud fixing. (Front) 18-inch by nine-inch; (Rear) 18-inch by 11.5-inch
Tyres Bespoke ZR rating asymmetric/directional tyres developed by Michelin (Front) 245x40x18-inch; (Rear) 295x35x18-inch
Luggage capacity (Boot) 272-litres; (Interior) 46.1-litres
from mclaren.com
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