My favorite new photo - Gordon Murray behind the wheel of XP3...

[Peloton25]

I stumbled upon these two photos before I moved recently and have been anxious to put them up in here, but lacked the proper internet connection at my new house to do so until tonight.

I found them on another message forum and there is a small chance that I will be able to secure a few more shots for us F1 fanatics and possibly the larger versions of these two. You know me - I'll do my best to make that happen and hopefully the photographer won't mind sharing.





I'm not sure how recent they were taken, so I'll try to find that out as well. Obviously, the date stamp of "March 14th, 1987" as seen on the first shot can't be the least bit accurate. The F1 was still a rough sketch in an old notebook in a box in Gordon's garage on that date. The initial conversation between the four principles responsible for conceiving the McLaren F1 as we know it wouldn't even take place until sometime the following year.

I assume these shots are indeed new to everyone here, as I would think that someone would have shared them before me if they had been the one who found them. Am I correct on those assumptions?

>8^)
ER

[McLaren Mike]

Yeah they are new to me.
You bought an Australian Wheels June 97' mag off eBay.. any new pics to share?
Also what's 'WILLANS'
-Mike

[Peloton25]

I don't know about the magazine - most of my stuff is still in boxes at the moment and as I have mentioned many times, I don't yet own a scanner. Someday.... soon too.

As for "WILLANS" - here's a quick company bio:

The world's leading motorsport safety harness manufacturer - Willans produces harnesses to suit all your motorsport requirments from Club Racing to Winston Cup and Formula 1.

Since 1968, Willans has been a supplier of safety harnesses to many leading Formula 1, BTCC, GT, Formula Ford, SCCA, Indy/CART, NASCAR and other teams in the motor sport industry.

"Suppliers of safety harnesses to Jordan, BAR, Honda, Vauxhall, Penske, BMW Motorsport, Van Diemen, Reynard, Panoz, Citroen Sport, McLaren Cars, Pilbeam, G Force, Westfield and many other leading teams and manufacturers."

Willans Harnesses are designed for use in automotive competition to minimize the risk of bodily harm in an accident. Design requirements for WILLANS harnesses are far in excess of those required by the mandatory design and performance standards. This has been demonstrated by experimental dynamic testing.

Based on experience gained in the aircraft industry, all Harnesses are constructed by clearly defined guide lines and built to the latest recognized standards.

Here's a link to their website, but it isn't working for me at the moment.

http://www.willansharness.com/

>8^)
ER

[MalkaJB]

Why do all pictures hosted off Supercars.net save as bitmaps, including jpeg files. I hate that!

Oh, and thanks for the pics.

Ok, here's my theory on the '87 time stamp. We all know how great an engineer Gordon Murray is right. I'm betting that Gordon saw the Back to the Future movies, got inspired, and decided to turn his F1 into a time machine. I'm assuming that just outside the first shot, over Gordon's right shoulder, you would see a flux capacitor, which Gordon duplicated in real life using his engineering skills. Gordon used his McLaren time machine to go back to the year 1987, where his old mullet haircut* would still be considered stylish. Does anyone else see this as a possibility?

*See Top Gear McLaren F1 video for reference

[Peloton25]

I see I was correct in calling you a "jokester" in that other thread.

Originally Posted by MalkaJB

Does anyone else see this as a possibility?

Ummmm.... No

SC.net is a pain - unfortunately, my normal image host was down at the time when I tried to upload these, so I used their site. It's convenient, but never great anymore.

There's a few tricks to getting images hosted from SC.net to not be saved as .BMPs. First - copy the URL from the image's Properties and paste it into a new browser window. Try to save it, and if it's still forcing the .BMP, then try refreshing the window using "F5" on your keyboard twice. If that doesn't work, you can try right-clicking on the image and selecting "Email Picture..." from the menu that appears. With XP, which is what I use, a small pop-up will apppear prompting you to tell it whether you want to email the original size, or a smaller version. At that point, you can simply hit cancel and then try saving the image again. That method usually works. If you are still having problems and assuming you are using MS Internet Explorer as your browser, go to your Internet Options under the Tools tab at the top of the screen and in the section labelled "Temporary Internet Files" click on the 'Delete Files' button. Then repeat the tricks I outlined from the top and one of them should definitely work.

I do plan to rehost these from my normal picture host as soon as it comes back up. I think they do nightly maintenance on their servers and it's sort of annoying. I've had so many issues with various image hosts in recent years, maybe I should just break down and get some webspace again and be done with them.

>8^)
ER