'Ultimate expression of teamwork': how McLaren created the MP4/4

Two designers of the most successful F1 car of all time, the McLaren MP4/4, explain how the car was borne of brilliant creativity and practical thinking

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3 Ayrton Senna McLaren F1 driver 1988 Japanese GP

MP4/4 resulted from ingenious solutions combined with practical thinking

Paul-Henri Cahier/Getty Images)

For any Formula 1 designers looking back on chapter after chapter of success, picking out just one creation can be tricky to say the least.

Particularly difficult when you had a hand in the ground-breaking McLaren MP4/1, the first F1 car with a carbon monocoque. Or its eventual follow-up, which Niki Lauda took to a brilliant third title after his incredible comeback. Then again, you could be agonising to choose between the McLaren-Ford Ayrton Senna laid waste to the field with at Donington ’93, or the MP4/13 Mika Häkkinen claimed his first crown in.

For former McLaren chief designer Steve Nichols and senior design engineer Matthew Jeffreys though, there’s little in doubt as to what they would go for: the devastatingly successful MP4/4, driven by the iconic pairing of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.

Viewed by many F1 fans as the definitive competition car, Nichols calls the most successful grand prix machine of all time the “ultimate expression of teamwork”, whilst Jeffreys says it was the “highlight” of a career packed with F1 titles.

Barnard’s team

John Barnard’s McLaren design team in 1984 – he stands left of centre, with Steve Nichols to the right of him and Jeffreys on the far-left

Matthew Jeffreys

Coming towards the end of turbo era in 1988, the low-slung design stood out from the rest of the field. Though comparisons have been drawn by Gordon Murray between it and his unsuccessful Brabham BT55, Jeffreys and Nichols explain how it was a pragmatic approach combined with imaginative design solutions which resulted in F1 brilliance.

However, it was also not without creative flair – after previous technical director John Barnard switched to Ferrari for 1987, the ‘kids’ below him were suddenly allowed to play with first the evolution of the MP4/3, then the revolutionary MP4/4 – albeit in slightly stressful circumstances.

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“We all used this as an opportunity to break out a little bit, do some of the things that we wanted to do,” Nichols tells Motor Sport.

“I wanted to do more, and I think other people in the team wanted to stretch their wings too. I wanted to use all the brainpower we had to take things to a different level.

“But it was difficult when John left [before 1987], because we knew following the Porsche-powered MP4/3 in ‘87, we were going to do a Honda turbo engine for one year and the year after that a normally aspirated Honda car.

“Neil Oatley came on board to bolster the design team, with him taking the naturally aspirated ’89 car and myself heading up the ’88 MP4/4.

“Our total technical staff during that period was 17 people. We had to divide it up into a normally aspirated team and turbo team, giving me even less people to work with – pretty stressful!”

Nichols, with his team of Jeffreys and others, had just eight months to come up with the MP4/4 machine, incorporating a Honda power unit which would soon be out of date. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop them incorporating some new ideas.

“We had stagnated, I thought, a little bit over the years from say, ’83 to ’86,” says Nichols.

4 Ayrton Senna McLaren F1 driver 1988 Japanese GP

One of biggest changes came in altering monocoque philosophy

ANTONIO SCORZA/AFP via Getty Images

“We’d maintained the skinny little V-shaped monocoque that was optimised for wider tunnels underneath with ground effect in the post-ground effect era – I had the impression that John was involved with Ron more on corporate matters, and seemed to be concentrating more on that.”

“Steve had always wanted to get rid of the V-shaped monocoque, and by the MP4/4 we had time to do it,” explains Jeffreys.

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“It means you can effectively get the fuel lower in the car, because you can make the bottom of the car sort of square sided, instead of V-shaped, so it drops the centre of gravity of the fuel.

“In that particular case we kind of lucked out a little bit because of the regulations. The reduced size of the engine [Honda being smaller than the TAG-Porsche], the reduced 150L size of the fuel tank that year, the rule which dictated we had to put the driver’s feet behind the axle, it all dictated the layout – it just sort of happened.”

“We had also been able to make some changes on the MP4/3 which also carried over,” points out Nichols. “The MP4/2 had a top radiator outlet, which we changed to the side on the MP4/3 to make it lower and more compact. The rear of the car also maintained the coke bottle shape you can see from above.”

Meanwhile Jeffreys, at the suggestion of Dave North, implemented an ingenious idea to solve a front suspension conundrum – once again following the MP4/4’s traits of pragmatism married up with lateral thinking.

2 Ayrton Senna McLaren F1 driver 1988 French GP

New power unit packaging requirements put McLaren design team under huge pressure

Paul-Henri Cahier/Getty Images

“I was the project leader composite/monocoque designer at the time,” he explains. “That was my sort of speciality in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. I was also put in charge of the front suspension, which we decided would be pull-rod.

“After moving around various options, we came the idea of putting the spring dampers in vertically, behind the driver’s feet.

“It made great packaging sense, kept it low, and there was space to do it – but the problem was this now meant there wasn’t space for a conventional sort of rocker [connecting the strut, as with a standard pull-rod suspension].

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“I had one of those of coffee discussions with Dave North, when he suggested using tracks instead of a rocker, similar to what was used when he was at Brabham. I thought, ‘That’s an interesting idea.’

“However, it was very much my responsibility to deliver the rising rates that Steve wanted, and design a completely new type of front anti-roll bar because the packaging meant it was [a] pretty weird [space] for a conventional one.”

Jeffreys has now turned his creative nous to painting incredibly detailed profiles of iconic F1 cars in addition to his engineering work – with many prints signed by legends of F1 such as James Hunt’s former team boss Lord Hesketh.

It’s fitting that the first car he turned to paint was the MP4/4 a car he he “knew a lot about dimensionally – so I was able to draw it pretty accurately!”

Back in 1987, Jeffreys was tasked by Nichols to use his artistic eye in creating technical drawings to style the bodywork areas not affected by aerodynamic restraints.

Nichols told the JayEmm on Cars YouTube channel that he agonised over the diameter of the front nosecone so as to maintain a McLaren “family resemblance”, but that the rest of the responsibility went to Jeffreys in making the car aesthetically pleasing.

MP4/4 drawings

Jeffreys’ original design schemes and notes for his section of the MP4/4

Matthew Jeffreys

“Obviously, the aerodynamics, the engineering and the science is the most important thing,” Jeffreys says.

“But there are some areas which the aerodynamicists say aren’t sensitive – it doesn’t make a difference. In which case, if you’re going to come up with a shape, you might as well make it look nice! That was our philosophy.

“Steven and I think along similar lines – literally, in some respects – in terms of what looks good and what doesn’t, the sense of proportion of things.

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“The narrow nose came about because the drivers [in their seating position] went backwards in effect, relative to the front of the car.

“Steve was keen to have a sort of flowing shape, or two rather – the angle of the cam covers and the fuel tank, and the drivers shoulders, which sort of follow through in the body work at a sort pleasing sort of angle.

“Once that was drawn up, Colin Smith, a design draughtsman, would then meticulously create the bodywork, first producing a wooden buck – essentially a full-scale model – section by section.

“With a full-size car appearing before your eyes, you can see if it looks a bit weird or whatever – this is how we adjusted the nose.”

Completing the design was an old associate of Gordon Murray’s to help with the car’s unique packaging.

“Where Gordon did contribute was that he brought in Pete Weisman to work on the step gear that was required for gearbox, because the crankshaft was low,” says Jeffreys.

Ayrton Senna McLaren F1 driver 1988 Hungarian GP

Driver’s seat position dictated certain aerodynamic styling

Grand Prix Photo

“Having said that, it was mainly Dave North who did the detail and design of it.”

Getting it all to work together though, and in such a short period of time, wasn’t quite so simple though.

“I’d be at the factory till 10:45pm every night – because that’s just before McDonald’s closed!” laughs Nichols.

“Everybody was so good on every level. The manufacturing guys, the laminating, the race team, the huge amount of effort that went into the testing programme and the Japanese test team, they threw everything at it – it was phenomenal.

“It was such a blessing for all people to be donating their time, coming in on the weekend to get it done, doing it for free because they wanted to. The MP4/4 was, to me, the ultimate expression of teamwork.”

It certainly could be argued to be just that. 15 wins out of 16 races in the 1988 season, garnered during an epic title duel between Senna and Prost making it statistically the most successful F1 car of all time. Design creativity that, in 1988, couldn’t be beat.

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