McLaren begins using its brand new wind tunnel in Woking
This new wind tunnel is part of several infrastructure improvements carried out by the Woking team. The wind tunnel, which has been greatly modernized at the McLaren Technology Centre, is now operational, and the team no longer needs to use the facilities in Cologne owned by Toyota.
Since 2010, McLaren has been using the wind tunnel facilities of Toyota in Germany, as the existing facility at its Woking site was not suitable for the changing size of the cars.
However, when Andreas Seidl arrived as Team Principal in 2019, he wanted to invest in modernizing the facility in order to bring McLaren’s aerodynamic research in-house and streamline the process instead of going to Cologne.
The CEO, Zak Brown, has approved the four-year project of dismantling the interior of the old wind tunnel while keeping its size and shape. This decision was made for cost-effectiveness reasons, as it was deemed simpler to modernize the site’s wind tunnel to meet modern Formula 1 specifications rather than building a completely new facility, which would have required more time.
« Once the project was approved, we carried out our design process simultaneously with the demolition of the existing wind tunnel. The demolition involved breaking down the old steel frame into much smaller pieces so that it could pass through the doors and be removed from the building », explains Hannah Allan, engineering project manager. Therefore, only the external structure and the main fan were preserved as they were.
The wind tunnel in F1 is highly regulated. In addition to a usage quota allocated per season based on the team’s standings, teams must adhere to a maximum speed of 50m/s, which is equivalent to 180 km/h, and, of course, a maximum size of the model at 60%.
These constraints had notably demonstrated their importance when, in early 2022, engineers were surprised by the ground effect and uncontrolled bouncing of the Formula 1 cars in a straight line, beyond 180 km/h.
Note that in order to function properly, the air must be properly treated before being projected against the model: « The airflow generated by the fan circulates at the four corners of the tunnel: during its path, it passes through rotating vanes and through the heat exchanger, which is used to maintain a constant air temperature. It is important to note that the air also passes through a number of flow conditioning devices to eliminate any turbulence before being accelerated to the required speed of 50 m/s. » details the press release.
Development for 2024 to be shared between Cologne and Woking
The Cologne wind tunnel was an integral part of the improvements that transformed McLaren’s season, with the team emphasizing that its impact will continue to be felt in the setups we are putting in place for the remainder of the season.
The 60% scale wind tunnel was used for the first time before the summer holidays for basic correlation work. The 2024 car is expected to benefit from the new facility, although the 2025 F1 car will be the first to be fully designed using McLaren’s wind tunnel.
The improvements to McLaren’s infrastructure have also led to a new simulator, the repurposing of the old factory as a composites facility, and a new machining workshop.
Discover below a few pictures of the new wind tunnel at the McLaren Technology Center!
