Have you been kvetching over the lack of orange on a McLaren Formula One car for the past few years? Talking endlessly about how McLaren needs to have more than just a thin orange stripe? Speaking at length not about McLaren’s lack of performance, but about how you wish they would paint their car in the team’s iconic orange?
We’ll see in a little while as to whether McLaren finally answered my wishes for a car that’s not slow and doesn’t suck, but all you 2016-livery-was-an-inside-job truthers finally got your wish. Look at this big orange thing. It’s McLaren’s 2017-spec F1 car, the McLaren-Honda MCL32, and it’s got more orange than a Florida tourism commercial.
The orange is a McLaren-exclusive color named Tarocco Orange, which features a faint pearl sparkle, per today’s announcement. Contrasting panels on this year’s F1 racer have been painted in satin black and gloss white, making the large swaths of orange pop even more.
McLaren says that the livery celebrates their long over-50-year history in F1, and the new era led by new (read: non-Ron-Dennis) management, new F1 rules, new series owners, and the half-new driver team of Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne.
My goodness, they’re really trying to pander to the fans and win y’all over in light of Dennis going away. First, they talk about going back to Le Mans. Now this. This is just flat-out thirst at this point. Are you people not entertained?
Of course, for the rest of us who—heaven forbid—have been more concerned about the car’s lack of performance and tendency to break than its paint scheme, never fear, there is a Formula One car under that shiny orange paint.
The featherweight MCL32 makes extensive use of carbon fiber and composites to weight a mere 1,605 lbs, per McLaren’s exhaustive list of car specs. Up front is a carbon-fiber wishbone and pushrod suspension, and in the rear, a carbon-fiber wishbone and pullrod suspension.
The car features Honda’s newest power unit, the RA617H, which I hope for poor Alonso’s sake doesn’t suck this year. Please don’t suck. I’m begging here. I’m tired of seeing McLaren suck.
Honda focused on reducing the weight of the RA617H power unit and lowering its center of gravity while increasing the power produced by its turbocharged V6 internal combustion engine, according to Honda Head of F1 Project & Executive Chief Engineer Yusuke Hasegawa in today’s announcement. It weighs just shy of 320 lbs.
Like the other cars this year, much attention has been paid to optimizing the aerodynamics in light of the wilder, crazier 2017 regulations. Much of it is fairly standard-looking 2017-spec kit, however, F1 Technical did notice these cool, unique fins behind the front wing.
There are also some cool hanging vanes on the rear wing assembly, as Craig Scarborough notes.
The car also features an all-new Akebono braking system to cope with the increased speeds of the 2017-spec car. But will it work? We hope so. It’s too orange not to.