McLaren Formula 1 team unveils MP4-X concept car McLaren Formula 1 team unveils MP4-X concept car - F1 news - AUTOSPORT.com
Interesting concept, but is it Formula 1? Hell no! Is it open wheel? No. Open cockpit? Nope. It's just a LeMans car with a narrower cockpit and bastardized open wheels. Delta Wing, anyone?
Boring and nothing original offered by them at all with this. Concepts by other companies and designers that pre date this effort have clearly been cannibalised.
They should concentrate on their immediate future, and the task at hand, which is first and foremost work on their competitivity and win Grand Prix again. Rgds
Macca do it in cyber space...Audi do it in real life. And Audi have a series in which they can race their car, Macca NOT. Audi steps up to 6MJ hybrid class with 2016 R18 WEC racer - WEC news - AUTOSPORT.com
And you would need Air Conditioning in that thing, plus there is a danger of staying trapped inside if the canopy get stuck: in case of a crash with fire.... Rgds
Firstly, if that's the future of F1, I think I'd seriously reconsider my interest if it ever came about. IMO, it's beyond fugly. Sure, the current iteration aren't exactly beautiful, but at least they resemble an F1 car. That thing? No thanks...... Concur on the A/C, or at least a significant upgrade in cool-suits. However, I also believe this 'they'll get stuck in a fire' argument is not really valid. They all carry onboard extinguishers already; known to work well. (Fortunately, I never did it, but I've seen them set off accidentally 2-3 times; what a friggin mess! All-nighters ensued just cleaning up the mess.) They all also have to have a 'break-away' valve between the tank & the lump; if the two come apart, that valve gives and seals the fuel flow off. (Again, back in my day, they were a PITA, but I believe they just work nowadays.) Further, marshals with extinguishers are always close by. Fire just isn't the danger it was in years past. The Le Mans guys seem to handle closed cockpits OK. It's still not an F1 car to me though......
Looks like they're late to the game with what RB designed for GT5 a while back with the X2010. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I love it !! This is exactly the path F1 should follow, rather than keeping open cockpit and open wheels "for tradition". At the moment, F1 is an anachronysm that tries to mix new technology with the ancient concept of pre-WWII single-seater. What's the point of spending $ millions on aero reasearch and hours in wind tunnels, if you don't enclose the items that most disturb the air flow? Come on F1, join the 21st century !!!
Yeah! And why are they still using "olde Worlde" internal combustion engines that burn petrol/gasoline? - They should be using electric motors only now! And what's with all this changing gear manually? - Throw those "old skool" gearboxes in the bin and give the cars fully automatic gearboxes that utilise GPS technology to optimise the gear changes! Where's the launch control on the car? Where's the traction control? Where's the active suspension? - Why oh why are they living in the dark ages? Thinking about it, why are they still putting a driver in the car? How old fashioned is that? - Surely they should be looking into driver-less cars by now?, after all, a computer would make far fewer errors every lap than a Human Being does! Exactly! - Full automation is the future, not manual labour! There should be no need to have someone sat in the car to drive it any more, that's far too old fashioned! I am of course only joking! In reality, the truth is that if these cars are the future of F1, and if they were to start making the cars more automated, then I for one would give up watching F1 immediately! If I wanted to watch these types of cars racing then I'd go and watch WEC instead of F1!
From a looks perspective its not bad. I 'd like it a bit more if the rear wing was wider and covered the width of the wheel shrouds. the info in on the digital rendering talks about intelligent tires - with sensors imbedded in them, motion control cockpit controls for the driver. the one big thing is cars like this and the Red bull are so fast that they exceed driver ability to withstand the G's ... so some form of driver survival has to a part of the mix. with modern fighter jets, the pilot is now more a systems manager than a real old fashioned PIC... the computers fly the plane, pilot dictates destination, altitude and concentrates on situation awarness - radar and weapons deployment... so what is to keep F-1 from going the same route? not that it would be bad, but the actual process of racing / driving i think would change... but it could be for the better... who knows Not real sure how exciting it would be.
