Chinese GP and Miami GP stuff on the F1 Store! Get it while it's lukewarm! Use affiliate link in description and I get some Greggs money!

I appreciated the 787B jab. Fun fact - the 1991 LeMans win was the only win that car ever achieved anywhere. It never won in its domestic series.

Hi Aiden, very good synopsis by you of the MP4/8. I was fortunate to be the engineer that integrated the same system into the Footwork car, we bought the system from McL for the '93 season. The active systems at this time were very different, the Willams was "fully active", by that it was purely a hydraulic ram, goverened by sensors that dicated the ride height, bumps, everthing! The McL system was similar, inputs regarding ride height, etc, but the McL system used coil springs to support the car, but had active spring seats that raised/lowered each corner and also passive ARB. the McL system acted/responded to a 5Hz input, meaning that all the bumps, curbs, etc were managed by the springs, this was also linked into "circuit dependancy" where the car knew where it was on the circuit at any time, dump the arse on the straights, lower the car through corners, etc. The biggest difference between the Williams and the McL systems were that the Williams system was "entirely active". The ride height sensors, everything had a hystrisis, meaning a delay, from sensor input, raise/lower, and this made the car very spooky to drive. Where as the McL system would have responded to the driver inputs passive/immediately.

I’ve long appreciated the Frank Williams opinion that no one factor makes a championship worthy car. He described it as being 25% chassis, 25% engine, 25% tyres (as in tyre war era specifically) and 25% driver. Having a big advantage in one of those areas isn’t enough to overcome weakness in any of the other 3. I tend to agree with that assessment.

Spot on. People tend to merge 92 and 93 into 1 year where everything was "the same", which hurts the mp4/8. As if the Malboro backed McLaren would see the tech advancements and go "well, there's nothing we can do about that"

Well, McLaren was adamant that it was their best car to date. Senna apparently loved driving it. They just needed more engine power. I think its just one of those times that you make a great job but someone else just makes a better one by the slightest of margins. I do think 1993 was a far closer season than we realize.

i recall sitting in a post race meeting at what was TAG Electronics at the time. Udo Zucker was very pleased with the publicity we were getting. He recalls while watching the race, after Senna had got a stoppingly good start, the commentator said that it appeared Mclaren was winning the electronics war. Udo was very pleased about this, as he told us that during the start of the race, Senna wasnt even using traction control. He added, "our Traction Control was Ayrton Senna". Cant recall what race that was, may even have been the 7A in 92 to be fair, but an anecdote worth telling all the same.

Honda. The Power of Running for the Door.

Brazilians like to say that Senna in 93 made miracles in a shitty car, me I study deeper and this video makes me happy because it really was a great car

Nimble chassis with electronics that easily rivalled Williams' by the end of the year, all it lacked was the sheer horsepower. Senna was brilliant, no question about that but people get too romantic about the idea that he could drag anything anywhere, he had a fantastic little car at his disposal.

Having watched "a team a season with McLaren" at the end of 1993 had a general idea that McLaren had active suspension and engine modes to play with.

That Jonathan Frakes' Beyond Belief cameo caught me off-guard. I remember when I was nee high watching that series on television back in early 2000s.Creeps the heck out of me every single time.

Steve matchett said that Benetton couldn’t run the traction control system that McLaren used because FORD wouldn’t allow the spark plug activated unit that McLaren used due to reliability concerns and McLaren was warned that using the system would incur them with charges for motors that were damaged. McLaren said they would take the chance and foot the repair bill for any motors that blew up

The MP4/8 is in the Automobilista 2 Formula Hi-tech pack if you want to try driving it in a sim.

My absolute favourite McLaren. I’ve got a photo of me standing next to one during a secret late night tour of the MTC 🤫

If McLaren had started Hakkinen in the other car for the whole season instead of Andretti, I think it would have been a much closer battle with Williams and between the 2 McLarens themselves but Senna had 4 retirements to Prost's 1 (Prost and Senna each had one non-scoring finish). Hill also had 4 retirements and one non-points score, same as Senna and he was in his first full year in the sport, which speaks again as to the quality of the car that he finished only 4 points off Senna in the Championship. The MP4/8 was a very good car, but the FW15C was more reliable over the season, with fewer driver errors too - Hakkinen outqualified Senna at Portugal and then crashed from a very promising position in the race and his brakes failed in Australia and Andretti crashed out of quite a few races, including at Kyalami and Interlagos.

This car had no chance against williams. Senna absolutely drove the hell out of it. However it is an absolutely gorgeous car, one of the prettiest ever.

Type in on KZfaq '1993 on boards Silverstone f1' and you'll see how crazy fast these are, with the Benetton hitting 193 down the hanger straight!! Mansell could only do 182 during qualifying in 1992!!!

A last minute offer was given to Mansell to partner Prost for 1993 but by then it was too late & he decided to leave. It's a shame because it would have been nice to see red one & I think Mansell would have wiped the floor with Prost for the reason of the active cars suiting his aggresive style.

I always wondered why McLaren didn't use Mugen engines for 1993.

Fascinating story on that McLaren. Adian, you gotta do a deep dive on the Toyota Eagle Mk. III. Maybe the best prototype that Toyota ever made and dominated IMSA in 1992 and 93.

I love the RA106 for its different front wing design approach (other teams went with the stacked front wing). It was such an elegant design visually.

Would love to see a video of Andretti at McLaren from you!

And thats part of the myth of the Donington lap from Senna... Williams setup was so extreme that didt work fine in wet weather conditions, noticeable the whole year, and Senna has been beated previously in wet tracks... Spain 1991 for example (and that Williams was not active at all).

My first F1 season was 2003--LATE 2003, two races to go in fact--and here in the States that meant Speed Channel and, of course, Formula One Decade, an hour-long program where the commentators looked back on the highlight reel of the upcoming round's equivalent ten years prior. The advertisement was something, something, "Epic battles! Senna! Prost!" with still shots of their cars that year. Having just learned that McLarens were white and black and Williams was HP-stickered white and blue, guess who didn't recognize either of those cars? I was also kind of horrified by those nose cones. They still look terrible, but given the gizmo wizardry underneath them, I can see why they need to be so bulbous. I also recall hearing David Hobbs and Steve Matchett taking swipes at McLaren's underperformance, despite the advertisements selling us wheel-to-wheel action between Senna and Prost as a given. This would be shameful if I could just remember whether or not those comments were given of the 1993 car or the 1994...

if it had the lamborghini engine, it would've been a serious challenge for the williams

Great video with a unique perspective. As far as wet weather performances I was always impressed with Rosberg 1.0 at Monaco in ‘83 - really brilliant and he had the flu!

Senna ranked his Estoril '85 wet weather drive above Donington '93 because it was in a passive car.

i think i read in Richard Williams "The Death of Ayrton Senna" many years ago, that Senna likened the 93 car to his nimble old FF2000 cars and was more than happy to throw it into corners

Senna was a great driver no doubt and I think that makes people forget that while at McLaren he was driving some of the best cars on the grid every year he was there

When you think about the difference between the personal computers of now and then *, it's surprising how good the on-board computing was back in the'90s. How quickly "decisions" could be made (edit: by the car's "brain") and acted on, especially when you needed floppy disks to carry the programs you needed for your PC! That particular part of the tech "boom" in F1 has always impressed me. Thanks for the story, Aidan, yet another top job! * Re typical personal computers, we had a near top-of-the-range PC with a ROM of 512 _K_ bought in '91; it cost nearly £1,000! Our next one bought in 2000 had 4GB ROM & 64MB RAM, again, on buying it, it was _close_ to being top-of-the-range (although what TOTR was changed pretty much monthly at that point), and which cost less than half the previous PC's price (c. £400). My latest laptop, about 6 years old (may be older; time flies) and still going strong, and which was nowhere near so high-end compared to others but was, compared to our PCs, outstanding in its specs, came from Tesco's for less than £250 - Moore's Law reigned supreme back then! This is just to give the youngsters here some idea of how computing power has changed. IIRC I heard that today's F1 cars produce something stupid like a _million_ points of data _per second_ (I clearly stand to be corrected), most, if not all of which, gets beamed back not only to the pit wall but the strategy team back at base! It fries my brain to think about that! Somehow it is turned into potentially race-winning strategic decisions that maybe hadn't even been considered before the race weekend!

Didn't even watched it yet, but so curious about this McLaren because here in Brazil there's this legend that like Ayrton Senna's car barely have a working steering wheel against the mighty all technological Williams, and Senna would still win (yeah, some exaggeration, but for some here, Senna would still be champion even if he was driving a VW Bettle)

That Williams was so good, it really should have won more than 10 out of 16 races. Crazy how much unreliability there was back then.

Two very different cars underneath really... Williams' was a pure hydraulic three-legged-stool system (one for the front and two for the rear) with hydraulics taking care of both ride height control AND road compliance. The Mclaren was completely different in that all four wheels had independent hydraulics for ride height control but road compliance was handled by conventional springs and dampers. This made the MP 4/8 more fiddly and time consuming to set up and repair.

The MP4/8 abides by the rule of 'If it looks right, it is right.' Everything about this car was right.

1993 was the first season I followed F1 religiously. A few thoughts: 1) Most definitely, I think the consensus at the time was that the McLaren was the second best car on the grid primarily hampered by the customer Ford engine. McLaren was one of only four teams to start the season with active suspension (Williams, Ferrari and Lotus were the other ones, later joined by Benetton). 2) McLaren clearly wasn't helped by having Michael Andretti in the second car. Andretti was overall poorly prepared for the more technically demanding F1 cars. When Hakkinen took over his seat, you could immediately see that the MP4/8 was indeed competitive. It's quite possible that Hakkinen could have won a race in that car had he started the season with them. 3) I would argue that Williams didn't have the strongest driver pairing in 1993. Prost in 1993 was somewhat past his peak. From Portugal onwards, he was certainly taking the foot off the gas and even before that, he didn't really have any stand out performances. Likewise, Hill was an inexperienced rookie. Prost relaxing at the end of the year and Hill just being a rookie allowed Senna and Schumacher to overcome the inherent deficits of their cars. 4) I think Ron Dennis really bungled the engine supplier situation and that ultimately really cost them any chance at the championship. If he wasn't able to convince Honda to stay another year and if the Renault engines weren't available due to Williams/Elf contract, perhaps a deal with Mugen to at least keep the Honda V10 or V12 engine for another year would have been the better choice.

I’ve never heard the ‘93 McLaren referred to as a “bag of bolts”. I was always of the impression that it was a good car that did not have enough power to match first Benetton, then the Renault engine in the Williams. I was of the understanding that Williams’ head start with electronic aids in 1992 meant that it took some time before the ‘93 McLaren car was at the same level electronically. I would assume that it would take time to understand and maximise the electronics on a car too, so surely Williams had a head start in ‘93 either way.

12:00 "...does that leave the door open..." - Dangerous to do that, given the subject matter/persons...

enjoyed this episode ... the inner engineer in me likes the fact that driver and car have to form a symbiotic relationship to be successful ..

Absolutely gorgeous looking car

Just watched the re-runs of Sprint Quali of Chinese GP (because it was broadcasted when I was at work) and was going to look for the analysis of why Lando’s super pole lap was reinstated. Not that I mind it though, I support McLaren but I was curious. Then stumbled across this which was uploaded just ‘1 hour ago’. Alright then, stopping by here first 😂

1999 Honda RA099 by Harvey Postlethwaite please.

Thanks for this one A! Love to have a video on Andretti’s efforts from ‘93 also.

I really enjoyed this video. I attended the Montreal GP working with one of the teams and got to see Senna drive this McLaren. This video brings back some good memories for me. I really liked the look of the MP4/8 and it was fascinating for me to see it up close in the pit lane back in the day.

Congrats on 100k

Aidan thank you for it all. I love your story of perseverance. Congrats for 100K and cheers for 200K subs. Out of curiosity is this now your full time job

top 3 fav car for me!

Here in Brazil people still think that Senna only drove bad cars, especially the MP4/8, some even say that this car didn’t had any eletronic assists which is insane. I love these videos that “humanize” Senna, he was an epic and relentless driver, no doubt, but he was no miracle worker.

1:40 not naming Steve Nichols, blasphemy!

Senna's talent is something to factor in, it was everything like some ^suggest. "Suggest" is a nice safe word. It places the ownership of the statement on whoever said it (in this instance, the unsited "some") but lacks any connotations. "Claims" always sounds, to my ear at least, like the speaker thinks the claimant is full of crap. I know it isn't always, or even usually intended that way, but the more contentious an issue is (like anything to do with Senna) the more I'm wary of words like claims, or supposedly. It's just not worth the fight.

Hello Aidan: Thank you very much for this. I have genuinely learned something. Up until now, I always thought that the FW15c was the ultimate F1 car. Have a good day.

Honestly if it was at all feasible, McLaren should've tried to run the Honda RA122E/B from the 1992 car. A quick google suggests that engine had a good 20hp over the next most powerful engine in the 1993 grid, with a max quoted power of 800hp. The V8 was a significant step backwards in my eyes.

Been wait for this one

The belief is certainly held nowadays that the MP4-8 was better than the FW15C, however I don’t think McLaren would’ve won with the Lambo engine, the reliability of that engine was pretty dire in the hands of other teams, still it’s a fascinating case of what if….

Next to all the stuff presented in the video, the MP4/8 was a BEAUTY!!!!!

There's always the unanswerable question, what if those cars had been around longer, and drivers really learned how to wring the most from them. What would could they have done once they learned "Oh I can get that deep into the corner" and stuff like that.

As you said, definitely by the end of the season the McLaren was in great form, as Senna won both in Suzuka and in Adelaide on merit (okay, you might argue that Prost might've checked out mentally by then, but still).

I heard rumours that Mercedes didn't spend any upgrade tokens on their W12 challenger in 2021 so I want you to make a video about the Mercedes W12. And with Redbull going over the cost cap that year, I guess that was why they were quicker over the season

I tape recorded the entire 93 season way back then. I can tell you that it was well-known that the MP4/8 had the most sophisticated active suspension system on the grid, but they were hamstrung due to not getting the very latest Ford HB engine because Benetton was the official factory sponsored team. Ron Dennis lobbied hard the entire year to get parity of equipment with Benetton.

I was researching about this car only yesterday!

Honda F1 engines of that period sure had the pixie dust sprinkled on them, and needed a clan of magicians to keep them running

1993 is one of those seasons Senna proved to be one of the GOATs. With a not so good car he did wonderful performances. He came stronger from 1992 wich is probably his worst season.

lol. I referenced your Mazda 787B video in the comments of another video about that car recently that came out not too long ago. I think the Group C cars were going over Jaguar 250 mph on the Mulsanne Straight according to Derek Daly when I met him before a Motorsports engineering class. So yeah...

McLaren had a great start to the season with Williams struggling. Prost was declining and was returning from his sabbatical and Hill was a rookie. Once Monaco hit, McLaren's performance deficit appeared as the TAG electronics were not good and lacked driveability. McLaren were stuck with two year old Ford engines and development dried up. Williams should've won 13 races that season, with Donington, Suzuka & Adelaide being Senna's 3 wins. Being outqualified almost 3 seconds at tracks like Magny-Cours and Silverstone, where Ligier and Benetton beat Senna was the death knell for Senna's title fight. So finishing 2nd was a respectable effort.

Good video

5 wins, all on street circuits or in wet races, advert for Senna's skill and McLaren's chassis design. The mid-season was all about power circuits (Silverstone, old Hockenheim, Spa, Monza) and a V8, not even the best one, was going to win. McLaren going several races without a podium definitely hurt them, suggesting the Benetton was sometimes 'best of the rest', even with engine levelling.

Best looking F1 car ever.

I suspect that Honda's move to a V12 was a backward step. The V10 came back in later iterations and proved surprisingly competitive in second tier cars. Then there was the full-on comeback that yielded Jordan's brief golden age.

excelent video

100K subs!!!

If McLaren had run the Lambo V12 from race 1, they would have had less success. The Lambo was pretty unreliable compared to the Ford HB. The same thing happened to Tyrrell when they went from the light-but-underpowered DFR V8 in 1990 to the heavier Honda V10 in 1991: the handling of the nimble 019 chassis was ruined.

Postulate? I think claim is fine though. I think we all like you because you use approachable language. Congrats on 100k

My favorite car ever

My understanding of the deal Bennetton had with Ford was that Ford could supply other teams but the engines had to be two versions before. Simply put, if Bennetton had version 7, McLaren had to have version 5.

Just because you have the best car doesn’t mean you win every race. When your brakes fail on lap 2, for example.

My understanding is 8:30 is not correct. In “The Life of Senna” (Rubython, 2004) it is stated that the engine deal was still in place, merely they had managed to get two upgrades. So Benetton went to South Africa with a Series VII and McLaren with a Series V. By Silverstone, McLaren got a Series VII… but Benetton had a Series IX.

Imagine if the Zetec-R arrived a year earlier and McLaren had it in this car 🤔

It would have been interesting to see if Senna would have stayed if he won the championship and if Ford would be favoring McLaren more instead of Benetton for 1994. That is also assuming Ron did not sign the deal with either Peugeot or Chrysler and held off until the championship was won. The McLambo would have gotten Senna to stay but if they won the championship and Ford gave them the engines Benetton inevitably got, it would be interesting if Senna would have also won 1994, assuming that with his input, the 1994 McLaren would have been better or on par with the Williams or Benetton.

Going to bringb out the story from Donington where Senna said something about switching cars, and Prost was absolutely silent on it which makes me wonder what Le Prof thought about the MP4/8

This McLaren and the 1994 Benetton (Regardless of what one thinks of cheating allegations!) were definitely the last bow of the Ford V8. I never understood why McLaren and Lotus did not stick with the Ford in 1994. Might have been better for them.

I like these “cars” storytime :) , I believe McLaren had the best chassis that year..

Another what if...What if McLaren sacked Andretti way earlier and allowed Häkkinen to race more during the '93 season? I think Häkkinen might have stolen more points from Prost and made the championship closer. Probably not enough for Senna to win but closer still...

I wonder if the legend of Senna's performances in this car would've been as great if he were partnered by Hakkinen all year, who would've been a much more even match than Andretti.

The McLaren MP4/8 was only a match for the Williams Fw15c in the last 2 races of the season after Williams had stopped developing their car,the rest of the season it was a long way off ,for example Senna was 2.9 seconds slower and 1.6 slower than Schumacher’s Benetton with the same engine at the British Grand Prix,even on a much slower track the Hungaroring it was 1.8 seconds off the Williams and 1.2 slower than Schumacher’s Benetton. Senna and McLaren were flattered in the 1st half of the season by Williams making mistakes and races which it rained.from Canada until Suzuka Senna never finished on the podium.

I am not sure that the McLaren active suspension was better than the Williams'. According to Paddy Lowe, the Williams system was a reactive system, whereas the McLaren's was pre-programmed to define where the car was on track and then would change attitude 4 times per corner, or at least so was the case at the beginning of the season. So, in other words, the Williams car would continuously adjust its suspension, come what may, throughout the lap. The McLaren, on the other hand, had a memory chip on the onboard computer which was programmed before hand. If a driver wasn't happy with some preset attitude adjustment, the memory would have to be changed in the garage. At least this is the information that I gathered over the years. I could, of course, be partially correct or completely wrong.

if you really want to stir up some drama, make a video on the F2012. I'm an Alonso fan, but I refuse to believe a car with 3 wins 15 podiums and 2 poles was the absolute tractor people keep saying it was.

Hey Aidan which sites do you use to look up power figures? I ask because some sites list the Honda V12 as being the most powerful engine by late-1992 with around 780HP, Wiki says 805HP which…sounds wrong to me. In any case I think it was a mistake for Honda to go to a V12 - their V10 was class of the field by a huge margin.

The MP4/8 was probably the slowest Mclaren since 1980. It was three seconds a lap slower than the Williams. It wasnt even reliable to beat the Williams.

I still can't fathom how Senna got 5 wins from that season. Only he could have pulled that off.

We all know the 787b was banned for sounding too damn good 😉 The only things that could sound better is the 90's - 00's V12 / V10 F1 Ferraris, 5 Rotors, I5T's, the M3 GTR from Most Wanted '05 (TVR Cerbera Sample) or the GMA T.50 to name a few. So much noiseporn has been created with internal combustion, good grief. 👌🏻👌🏻

I wonder how close it would have been to the Williams fw13c if it had some POWAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes! Squashed hedgehog time! 🦔

How many times has Honda "left" Formula 1?

Many say the McLaren had better systems then the Williams especially the active suspension pretty sure I remember even Patty Lowe saying as much also. Power was the only drawback.

At the time it was regarded as a great chassis.

Do the 94 ,95 and 96 mclarens please

Nice work, I almost enjoy motor racing technology rather motor racing.

that's the first time i've heard "loose wheel nut @ monaco". story time?

Andretti was a horrible teamate that year that car was awesome he just couldnt drive in F1

11:44 so the 2016 red bull?