The McLaren MCL39 is one of the cars most closely observed by experts: the evolution of the World Champion F1 car presents some interesting concepts that demonstrate the extremization of certain ideas.
Italian journalist Giorgio Piola presents us with three shots showing some of the details observed on the papaya-colored car.
The most unusual one shows the radiators placed in the sidepods: the two stacked elements are very similar to those of last year (they start right behind the upper anti-intrusion cone and descend almost to the exhausts), but the aspect that deserves attention is the… gap that separates the frame area from the airflow passage that allows heat to be extracted from the cooling system.
What is the reason for this gap? The engineers at Woking want to prevent the temperature generated by the power unit from reaching the chassis and heating the fuel inside the tank: the colder the fuel, the better the performance.
In the rear section of the McLaren floor, where usually only a strut is seen to prevent flexing of the last portion of the floor, we have noticed the presence of Pitot tubes used to analyze the airflow speed at an aerodynamically crucial point of the car.
At the front end, meanwhile, the attention to detail is evident in how the upper arm of the front suspension is integrated into the chassis: now there is a cover that cleans up the airflow toward the sidepods. The devil is in the details…
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