SPECIAL: The McLambo That Never Was
Written by: F1 Racing 04/14/2008 - 01:52 PM
London, UK
Senna and the Ford-engined '93 McLaren humbled the more powerful Williams-Renaults on occasion, but the Brazilian was determined to get a power upgrade for '94.
Late summer, 1993. Ron Dennis being chauffeured in a plutocrat’s barge alongside partner, billionaire and confident Mansour Ojjeh. A carphone (the latest thing then) rings. Half a decade before mobile-phone ubiquity, very few people have this number. Must be important.
Dennis extends a manicured palm toward the trilling black handset; places it next to his ear.
“Ron, hi,” says a softly accented South American voice. “It’s Ayrton.”
Senna is in a state of some emotion. He has recently stepped from the cockpit of a Lamborghini-engined McLaren MP4/8 “hybrid” and has been beguiled by a glimpse of a possible future. One with V12 power, a wailing, rev-addicted screamer behind his shoulders; the promise of more competitiveness. More speed.
It has been a difficult year, 1993. After three world titles together since ’88, the team has been reeling under the Williams-Renault technical sledgehammer. Senna has nonetheless gladiatored his way through the year and will end it as runner-up. Despite the handicap of a Ford V8 weaker not only than the Renault V10 but shy, too, of the similar but higher-spec factory Ford unit powering Benetton. But Ayrton Senna – unquestionably still the greatest driver of his day, despite the recent successes of Nigel Mansell (1992 champ) and Alain Prost (who would win the ’93 title – wants more power. And his desire has been piqued by what he has just tasted.
The pungent V12 slotted into the proven-excellent MP4/8 tub (designed by Neil Oatley and Henri Durand) will, Senna believes, give McLaren the wallop the team needs to challenge for the ’94 crowns. It will allow him to recommit to the team for which he has driven only on a race-by-race basis throughout ’93. It will allow him to ignore the overtures of Frank Williams, who has craved Senna’s presence in one of his team’s cars as much as Senna craves hp.
He begins to lobby. He reminds Ron of the success the team enjoyed with Honda V12 engines…. But it is already too late. A train of events is in place that will lead to Senna’s departure from McLaren and take him, fatally, to Williams.
Things were so very nearly very different. Dennis, tempted by the giddy promise of the still-untamed V12, reached agreement with Lamborghini’s owner, Chrysler, for McLaren to run the engines through ’94. A handshake deal to that effect was made at the Frankfurt motor show in September 1993 between Dennis, Chrysler President Bob Lutz and Lambo’s F1 chief, Daniel Audetto (although Dennis, it would later emerge, never believed the deal had bee “inked”). Lutz and Audetto began to make plans, encouraging engine design chief, mercurial, brilliant Mauro Forghieri, to listen to Senna’s entreaties for a less-brutal top end and a fatter midrange.
He was heeded, of course, because he was Ayrton Senna, triple World Champion. Legend. Twenty-five horses, grazing in the rarefied pastures at the top end of the rev range, were culled and 60 more were found on the lower slopes. The changes made the engine more driveable, the car faster.
Ayrton Senna (LAT photo) » More Photos
Mika Hakkinen, McLaren’s ’93 test driver before replacing Michael Andretti for the final three races of the season – and the only man still alive to have driven the McLaren-Lamborghini, tested it soon after Senna. Fourteen years on, the memory remains vivid.
“I remember that test very clearly – it was a very exciting time,” says Hakkinen, who would go on to claim a couple of world titles of his own with McLaren. “The Ford engine was a good package but we had very high expectations of the Lamborghini V12 and we were right to – when you put your foot down, you would really go.
“There were a couple of problems, for sure. It was very long, for a start, and that didn’t help the chassis. The fuel consumption was higher, it was a bit too heavy and it needed more cooling. But it was a very exciting engine.”
Never more so than on one chilly afternoon at Silverstone. “Yeah, I’ll never forget the feeling of it around there,” Mika recalls. “It was amazing. The power kept on coming. It was fantastic; we were really flying. But on the Hangar Straight going towards Stowe, it exploded…I mean, really exploded! It was massive, maybe the biggest engine blow-up I ever had. It was shocking, actually. Engine bits and pistons were flying past me, left, right, everywhere. I could see them coming past my helmet. It was such a big bang, it blew a hole in the floor. Still, it was one of the most special moments in my F1 career. And what an incredible sound…”
No doubt, the Lambo 3512 wasn’t ready for a championship campaign, but there was time to test and develop it. And the chassis was already a honey. Giorgio Ascanelli, then Senna’s race engineer, now Toro Rosso’s tech boss, remembers the all-nighters pulled to graft the V12 onto a monocoque designed for a V8.
“It was three months of solid work, in the middle of a season; new launch control, revised chassis, gearbox, drive-by-wire…it was a lot of work. Only a great team like McLaren could have done it. But we came out with something pretty special. It was a bit longer and heavier than the V8 car, but more stable and easier on its tires. And it was considerably more powerful.”
It thrilled Hakkinen. It inspired Senna, who wanted to race it straight away, before ’93 was out. If it blew up, so be it. At least it would be quick.
Dennis, though—tough-loving, romantic but unsentimental Ron Dennis – was unwavering. The team would finish the season with the Ford (and Senna would win his last McLaren race, the Australian Grand Prix, from the pole). Besides, Dennis already had other plans. He had conjured a ’94 deal with Peugeot, an ambitious French giant jealous of compatriot Renault’s multiple-title success.
Larrousse never gave the Chrysler/Lambo a shot at the front, and corporate enthusiasm quickly evaporated after McLaren opted for Peugeots. (LAT photo) » More Photos
Peugeot came to McLaren with its prototype A6 V10, sackfuls of francs, and the promise of an intensive development program. It was a major manufacturer, offering the stability and deep pockets Dennis had pined for since his team’s split with Honda at the end of 1992. Financial inducements made the partnership inevitable, but it was agreed without Senna’s blessing, and would incur the undying wrath of the Lambo/Chrysler management. A brief liaison that could have brought spectacular success ended after a few short months as one of F1’s most acrimonious, though almost overlooked, chapters.
When announced, the deal had an immediate fallout. Senna left the team, not soley because of the abortive McLambo partnership, but because he knew that a McLaren-Peugeot would be no match for a Williams-Renault in 1994. Chrysler ended its funding of the F1 project, and Lambo had to close its factory (although, under Italian law, it had to remain open one more season, during which it supplied engines to Larrousse).
A few months on, it became clear the McLaren-Peugeot partnership was on course for ignominy as one of the least-successful cars the team had ever built. It finished a distant fourth in the ’94 championship with eight podiums, but no wins. The Anglo-French partnership began to fray early, torn apart by frustrations borne of unreliability, and Dennis, Lamborghini’s nemesis and Peugeot’s fleeting darling, began to explore a new relationship with Mercedes-Benz (destined, with bittersweet irony, to merge with Chrysler four years later). Lambo’s F1 operation, emasculated, shuffled into God’s waiting room.
Ayrton Senna was killed on May 1, 1994, when his Williams-Renault crashed at Imola. There are many who remain in F1 who were close, then to Senna and close, still to those involved in the McLaren-Lamborghini affair, who believe that had team and engine builder agreed to race together in 1994, Senna would have stayed on. They believe he might still be with us to speak late and long about his epic duels with his heir apparent, Michael Schumacher.
-Anthony Rowlinson/F1 Racing
so Ron always had a desire to pull in a manufacturer with deep pockets but it backfired. money will not always buy success. with regard to going for V10 he made the right choice in terms of engine configuration. the V8 was too low on power and the V12 was too heavy and thirsty as Ferrari found out. sometimes it isn't only about power. other factors started to influence ultimate pace. the age of aerodynamics was upon us.
