McMonster - 1988 McLaren MP4/4 [Blog Post]

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Ayrton Senna was already a proven Formula 1 driver. Having won six races and countless podiums since his debut in 1984, he was signed by Ron Dennis at the McLaren team for the 1988 season.

Having raced at Lotus the year before under Honda power, Senna had built up a good relation with the Japanese brand. With the approval of reigning world champion Alain Prost, Senna was signed with the team, along with the Honda RA168E engines.

Having been designed in conjunction with legendary racing car designer (and McLaren technical director at the time) Gordon Murray, the design was loosely based on the Brabham BT55, a car that Murray designed for the 1986 season with Brabham, when he was their chief designer.

Statistically, the MP4/4 is the most dominant and successful F1 car of all time. Winning 15 of the 16 races during the 1988 season, the MP4/4 has a success rate of just over 93%. The closest another car has come to breaking this record is Mercedes with their W07 in 2016, having a success rate of 90% and winning 19 of the 21 races that season.

1987 was not very good season for the McLaren team. Having been designed by Steve Nichols, the MP4/3 only had a maximum power output of around 850bhp, the Porche-built TAG Heuer V6 lost out nine times to the dominant Honda-powered Williams of Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell. And just to rub salt into the metaphorical wound, the MP4/3 also lost out twice to Ayrton Senna’s Lotus-Honda 99T.

And then to make matters even worse, the Ferrari of Gerhard Berger has won two races in the later part of the season. Reigning world champion Alain Prost, could only manage a measly three wins, which was his lowest number of wins since the 1982 season with Renault.

Unfortunately for Prost, he could only manage 4th place in the Drivers’ Championship. However, his win in Portugal was enough to take 3-time world champion (1969, 1971 and 1973) Jackie Stewart’s record for the highest number of F1 wins. This was his 28th career win.

Due to Senna’s good relationship with the folks at Honda, when me moved to McLaren in 1988, he brought Honda’s RA168E engine with him from Lotus. Since the 1985 season, the RA168E had been the best engine on the grid.

With Williams losing the use of the Honda engines for the ‘88 season, a strong season for McLaren was almost guaranteed. Previously, team boss Ron Dennis had tried to secure Honda power units for his Formula 2 team. He finally managed to secure Honda’s PUs after 4 [mostly successful] seasons with TAG Heuer units.

The car was initially designed to be used with the turbocharged Honda unit, giving the McLaren team a distinct advantage over their rivals who decided to switch to naturally aspirated engines. It was also widely speculated that Honda would introduce their V10 engine for the 1988 season. Ron Dennis then later confirmed that the V10 engine was not part of the plan for 1988.

By keeping the V6 engine, this gave the team more time to develop the 1989 car, the MP4/5, which was an evolution of the MP4/4.

The situation drastically improved at the McLaren team when Senna signed to partner Prost on a 3-year contract, at Prost’s suggestion, which is kind of ironic.

The fantastic chassis, the Senna-Prost partnering and the dominant Honda PU looked like a combination that could not be beaten. However, there were a few concerns after the FIA introduced regulations that strangled turbo-powered cars. This new set of regulations that forced-induction cars could have a fuel tank of no more than 150 litres for the race.

Honda’s engine management team world on thee fuel consumption of the RA168E engine. The engine was also designed so that the turbo pressure could be reduced, instead of upgrading the 1987 spec engine. This was done to reduce the amount of embarrassing late-race retirements.

The team also experimented with newfangled Active suspension technology in early tests, but this was abandoned before the first race. The car appeared ‘as-is’ during the season, apart from a few aerodynamic revisions.

Even with little pre-season testing under the cars belt, Senna managed to take pole position at his home race in Brazil, which was the first race of the season. He pushed the MP4/4 to half-a-second faster than Nigel Mansell’s Judd V8-powered Williams FW12, with teammate Prost in 3rd.

One feature of the MP4/4 which is still used today was the seating position. Up until then, the seating position in Grand Prix cars was relatively up-right. The FIA passed a set of regulations that stated that the top of the drivers head had to be below the imaginary line between the top of the roll bar and the top of the cowling, and the cars low-slung aerodynamics, to pass these regulations Gordan Murray (the cars designer) designed the seating to be layed back, much like the F1 cars of today. Some claim that the MP4/4 pioneered the ‘modern’ F1 car seating layout before most other teams took it into consideration.

Alain Prost stated that this made the car very uncomfortable to drive. But as the season progressed, he claimed that he was getting more used to it and was comfortable to drive.

Due to the regulations mentioned above, this also made the nose of the MP4/4 rather a lot longer than the teams rivals, as the McLaren team also chose to run with FISA’s new safety regulations for 1988, which meant the drivers feet must be behind the line of the front axle. At his point, these regulations were optional. They would only become mandatory the following year in 1989.

Most people know the MP4/4 as the most dominant F1 car of all time. Before the ‘88 season, the most dominant car was Lauda’s MP4/2. Designed by John Barnard with carbon fibre monocoque technology, Prost and Lauda won 12 of the 16 races that year, and winning Lauda his third and final championship, also with Prost finishing just 1/2 a point behind his teammate.

The MP4/4 not only dominated the MP4/2’s record in races, but also in qualifying sessions. The MP4/4 took 15 victories of the 16 races, including ten 1-2 finishes. Alain Prost managed 1st or 2nd in 14 of the races that he finished - having only 2 retirements at Britain and Italy. Senna took 13 of the cars 15 pole positions, which was a personal record. The MP4/4 also locked out the front row on 12 occasions and set 10 fastest laps.

The domination run was only interrupted on 1 occassion, at the Italian GP (Round 12). Senna crashed out just 2 laps from the end while trying to overtake Jean-Louis Schlesser (Nephew of Jo Schesser - a driver from the 1960’s) in his Williams, taking place on Nigel Mansell who had a case of chickenpox - of all the illnesses!! Prost already retired from the race due to a rare engine failure. Gerhard Berger would go on to win an emotional race, just a month after the death of Enzo Ferrari.

McLaren’s domination was most noticable at the San Marino Grand Prix. Both drivers qualified in the 1:27s, with Senna over 0.7 seconds faster than Prost. Meanwhile, no other driver could get a time below 1:30. During the race, both cars had lapped every car in the field, including defending world champion Nelson Piquet’s Lotus 100T. This was done by lap 55 of the 60 lap race. The Lotus’ both used the same 1988 specification Honda engines as the McLarens’, but the MP4/4 had such unparalleled aerodynamic efficiency on the long straights at the Imola circuit. This meant that the McLarens’ both lapped their fastest laps faster than Piquet’s qualifying time, putting smile on the faces of the entire McLaren team and emphasizing McLaren’s dominance.

The MP4/4 only retired four times during the whole 1988 season, twice with Prost and twice with Senna. Prost at the [very wet] British GP and an engine failure at the Italian GP. Senna retired at Monza after a collision (mentioned above) and his infamous incident at ‘Portier’ at the Monaco GP.

Having qualified 1.4 seconds faster than Prost (who qualified 1.2 seconds faster than Gerhard Berger’s Ferrari), it was thought that Senna had an easy race, which he did. However, this is Senna. By lap 66 of the race, he had built up a massive 50-odd second lead on Prost, who was stuck behind Bergher’s Ferrari for 54 laps. Senna’s infamous accident caused him so much disappointment that [living in Monaco] he went home for several hours and did not make any contact with the team until they were packing up later that evening.

The MP4/4 was also dominant in the top speed department too. During qualifying at the German GP at Hockenheim, the car set a record for the fastest speed trap of the ‘88 season when both Senna and Prost managed a top speed of 333kph, that’s a staggering 207mph! Meanwhile Gerhard Berger managed 204mph in his non-turbo Ferrari.

At Silverstone, the team introduced a new aerodynamic package for the car. This deleted the turbo ‘snorkels’ on top of the side pods. These directly fed air into the turbos. Both drivers fed-back to the team regarding the new aerodynamic package, and both stated that the car did not feel as balanced. This caused the team to re-implement the snorkels for the rest of the weekend, and it was the last time they were seen on the car for the season. Eventually, it was sussed that the imbalance of the car was not caused by the removal of the snorkels, but by incorrectly set up suspension. Ron Dennis, then team boss, had estimated that the R&D of the new aerodynamic package had cost the team around £150,000 for purely aerodynamics, not giving the engine any extra horsepower.

By the end of the season, McLaren had taken the Constructors and Drivers titles, with Senna just edging ahead of Prost by a measly three points. The constructors championship was wrapped up by the Belgian GP, just round 11 of the 16 race season. The team finished a monumental 134 points ahead of the 2nd placed team, Ferrari.

For the 1988 season, six chassis were constructed using carbon fibre monocoque technology, with thee assistance of American aerospace company, Hercules Aerospace. Numbered 1 through 6, they were all used throughout the year at some point.

The MP4/4 was succeeded in 1989 by the MP4/5, powered by a naturally aspirated 3.5L Honda unit, due to new regulations. The 1989 car would also give McLaren another Constructors title with Prost and Senna finishing 1-2 respectively in the Drivers’ standings.

Mercedes [and former McLaren] F1 driver Lewis Hamilton got the chance to drive his hero’s MP4/4 on Top Gear. After driving the car, he was quoted as saying “I love this car. It’s one of the best days of my life. I finally can check off my dream of driving this car”. Not to any surprise, Hamilton also pointed out the lack of aerodynamic grip compared to the 2010 MP4/25 he drove that year. The show also mistakenly quoted the 1986 power figures for the Honda engines. Rather than having 1,200hp as commonly mistaken, the car only has around 700hp.

Another version of the car was produced, the MP4/4B. This car was not raced, but was developed as a test-bed for the new 3.5L Honda V10 engine, designed around the new regulations for the ‘89 season where turbocharged engines were banned.

The MP4/4 has also featured in video games such as the Forza Motorsport franchise, the Real Racing 3 mobile game and the Gran Turismo games - featuring under the names ‘F688/S’ (Japanese and US versions) and ‘Polyphony002’ (European versions).

Well there you go people, that’s all there is to know about the 1988 McLaren MP4/4, the greatest F1 car of all time. Not quite as detailed as it could be however, if it was detailed as I could make it, I may as well publish a book you’d be here so long, haha…

Please let me know if you enjoyed the article, I thoroughly enjoyed writing it and finding out more about the MP4/4 (yes, I’m not an encyclopedia lol). A lot of effort went into making this and I really hope that you enjoy…

Cheers…

Thanks all for reading, drive safe,
675LT_ftw