Vacationing in a McLaren MP4-12c

I'm a bit nonplussed by the generic styling of the McLaren MP4-12c but equally excited about what it seems capable of. If the car is truly as good as described then it may be that the Ferrari 458 is going to quickly find itself in the number 2 spot of this segment.

Regardless of all of that, I just got back from nearly a week of fishing, drinking, biking and swimming in the Florida Keys - a few days and over 2,000 miles in the newest baby McLaren still sounds like it might be a better proposition...Autocar seemed to think so!

Being on Team McLaren in 1975

I came across this little 25 minute video on Vimeo and thought it would be interesting to pass along. It's a fairly intimate look at the Team McLaren during the '75 season with Emerson Fittipaldi in his last year with McLaren and the secondary driver Jochen Mass - both at the wheel of the M23 powered by the Cosworth DFV. Ironically, this would be Fittipaldi's last season with McLaren before he would leave to endure an unsuccessful stint on his brother Wilson's Fittipaldi Automotive team. The following season, McLaren would pick up rogue driver James Hunt who would battle down to the wire to beat Ferrari 312T driver Niki Lauda by a single point during the typhoon of a grand prix at Mt. Fuji.

What's especially interesting, though sometimes a little slow, is that the video provides tremendous insight into the minds of Fittipaldi and Mass in the moments before a race as they mentally prepare for automotive combat. As I said, there are times where the video is a bit slow and doesn't move but having basically 25 minutes of in-pit time from 1975 is an important view into the manner in which the teams were run 35 years ago. From what I can tell, much of the racing sequences were filmed at Interlagos on a few years after it was added to the calendar - and the team and drivers appear fairly lackadasical by comparison to when the team fell under the iron fist of Ron Dennis bringing it into today's iteration of Team McLaren.

Enjoy!

McLaren 1975 from gt4zone on Vimeo.

History Lesson

Cool video, I'm not quite sure what I think of Hamilton and Button sitting in Senna's car. Seems sort of sacrilege in a way, as if they've not earned it with multiple World Championships. However, Hamilton has the intensity to rectify that.

Either way, great little promotional film by McLaren showing off the insanely capable MP4's of the late 1980's with the Honda RA168E turbocharged V6 that kept Prost and Senna dominating throughout 1988 before picking up the Honda NA V10 for '89. Either way, it's still cool to hear current drivers reflect on how different Formula One cars were only 20 years ago.




(Source: Axis of Oversteer)