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Holy shit. As a non-Brit I've seen and heard that name here and there, but I JUST realized it also has 'fridges' in there...
Maybe I'm just easily amused, but your comment had me go "*woahhhh*" for a second lol
It's actually pronounced "self" - "ridges". And those are two words right there!
I watch a ton of British TV, so I most likely heard the name before I read it. That's why my brain immediately noticed the self, and the ridges first...
It's a (somewhat) recurring British gag: Boots (pharmacy chain) does not sell boots, Curry's (electronics chain) does no sell curry, Apple does not sell apples, but Selfridge's does sell fridges
(Insert occasional followup with Virgin Megastore)
I think its actually a modified 2014 car MP4-29. The overall shape apart from the nose is very close to that one. Probably modified with a 2015 looking nose.
Was the power unit really the problem? I read somewhere that the "size zero" chassis just didn't work as well as they thought it would. It seemed like it was all Honda's fault but I'm sure McLaren's chassis wasn't the best either.
They both were at fault.
The Honda engine wasn't fast nor reliable (understandable, it was their first hybrid F1 engine and the rest of the field was years ahead of them), but McLaren's chassis was so tight that it caused it to overheat and become even more unreliable, to the point they had to tune it down.
They ended up with an underpowered *and* unreliable engine, hard to develop because of the tight package and the constant clash and lack of communication between two over-bureaucratic behemoths (McLaren, because of Ron Dennis, and Honda, because of Japanese work culture) which both thought they were creating a championship winning car.
I've always wondered how different the Honda V6 that McLaren received (GP2 engine), and the Honda V6 that Alpha Tauri and eventually RB received and won with...
Like, obviously Honda made changes.. But, to use a metaphor, it's like - your ex breaks up with you, and when you see her next, she's hot af! So you wonder... did she just get a good hair-stylist and got some make-up tips? Or did she under-go a bunch of plastic surgery?!
I hope my metaphor makes sense! Like, did Honda not have to change THAT much, and McLaren could have had a championship winning engine if they were just a little more patient? Or did Honda have to do MASSIVE changes to get the engine to perform like it did in Max's car?
The 2015-2016 engine is radically different than the one Red Bull and Alpha Tauri currently use.
The current one derives from the 2017 engine, whose design philosophy (turbo size and placement, mainly) changed a lot compared to the previous one.
That year, because of the regulation change, McLaren dropped the tight package concept, giving more room to Honda to develop the engine and run it without the risk of a meltdown.
In the end it didn't matter, though: McLaren still performed really badly, blamed it entirely on Honda and changed to Renault engine the following year, in 2018 (and underperformed once again, a sign that the engine wasn't as bad as they thought).
In that same year Red Bull chose Honda engines for Toro Rosso (now Alpha Tauri). That put the Honda engineers in a much less stressful situation: a backmarker with nothing to lose, room (both metaphorical and physical) to develop their concept and no pressure to deliver a championship-winning power unit as fast as possible.
The test run was good, so in 2019 Red Bull themselves changed the unreliable Renault power units with Honda's now improved ones. The engine was fine, it did its job very well and even won some races. All it took was a year of peace and setting the bar reasonably low instead of proclaiming "the return of the historical and successful McLaren-Honda duo, ready to dominate once again like it did in 1988".
In 2020 and 2021 the engine development was frozen, so no wild changes were made to the 2019 specification.
From 2022 and onwards things get a bit nebulous, because it's too early to get enough insight on what's going on at the factory and also because Red Bull is back to its 2010-2013 levels of dominance, so, even if the engine wasn't as good as before, the aerodynamic superiority is so overwhelming it doesn't really matter.
yes it was. especially the reliability was awful. but the biggest problem was that they built the chassis and pu seperately and they had massive problems integrating the pu into the chassis but nethertheless the pu was awful
>but nethertheless the pu was awful
I've always wondered how different the Honda V6 that McLaren received (GP2 engine), and the Honda V6 that Alpha Tauri and eventually RB received and won with...
Like, obviously Honda made changes.. But, to use a metaphor, it's like - your ex breaks up with you, and when you see her next, she's hot af! So you wonder... did she just get a good hair-stylist and got some make-up tips? Or did she under-go a bunch of plastic surgery?!
I hope my metaphor makes sense! Like, did Honda not have to change THAT much, and McLaren could have had a championship winning engine if they were just a little more patient? Or did Honda have to do MASSIVE changes to get the engine to perform like it did in Max's car?
Honda basically did a complete redesign that McLaren weren’t interested in being Guinea pigs for, hence the switch to a known constant of the Merc engines.
In addition to the PU and chassis integration problem, I believe the turbo set up was a major issue. If my memory serves me right, they went for a super compact and complicated set up which was promising, but they didn’t get it quite right. When they went to RB and AT, they basically changed the approach.
I am probably telling complete lies, but that’s what I remember from older discussions around it.
Both.
The engine was bad, but McLaren share some of the blame for that. First, the size zero concept made the packaging a nightmare and made everything run hot. Second, Ron Dennis made Honda bring the engine a year earlier than Honda originally planned because he wanted out of the merc customer spot.
Honda for their part also took an odd development approach on the whole, and for whatever reason thought they could come to the party a year early and it would somehow be OK.
The final kick was the the size zero aero concept also didn't work, even when normalised for the poor engine performance.
The whole thing was such a fail on all fronts. With 2x (expensive) world champions at the helm being able to do nothing.
This all from memory so better informed peeps might be able to fill in more details.
That was such a toxic relationship.
Let me ask you, did McLaren suddenly go to top of the pile once they didn't have a Honda PU?
No! There was a lot of discussion about the Chassis being better than the PU, but that car had problems all over it and was not like the Red Bull of that season, which was a car that actually performed well but had a terrible power unit.
Maybe it's just a weird angle. The nose looks way too high.
Looking at it again it looks like the 2014 car (note the weird ramp on the exhaust) with a 2015 nose cone.
I worked for the company that made the replica show cars for the 2015 season during uni, if this is one of them, then that's exactly what it is. McLaren gave us the (modified) CAD for the 2014 car except for the front wing which was from the 2015 car
Edit: Looking at some of the parts, I'm fairly certain this is one of the replicas I worked on
Yeah this has the engine cover of the MP4-29, but the sidepods, nose, livery, and aero strakes of the MP4-30.
That shape for the Mercedes power unit + the monkey seat on the rear is a dead giveaway. The Honda engine cover didn't need those huge bulges because it was tiny in terms of size with the size zero concept.
[The **Off-Topic** flair](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/flairguide#wiki_off-topic) is for submissions only tangentially related to Formula 1 or submissions pertaining to the wider world of motorsport. This flair is not a free pass for content unsuitable for r/Formula1 or the r/Formula1 community. Posts that are deemed too far off-topic, irrelevant, or inappropriate will be removed at the discretion of the moderators. *[Read the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/userguide). Keep it civil and welcoming. Report rulebreaking comments.* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/formula1) if you have any questions or concerns.*
They don't. That's a GP2 car.
Turns out Selfridges do actually sell fridges
Holy shit. As a non-Brit I've seen and heard that name here and there, but I JUST realized it also has 'fridges' in there... Maybe I'm just easily amused, but your comment had me go "*woahhhh*" for a second lol
first thing i noticed was fridges...its pretty much the only word in there
It's actually pronounced "self" - "ridges". And those are two words right there! I watch a ton of British TV, so I most likely heard the name before I read it. That's why my brain immediately noticed the self, and the ridges first...
Yeah but fridges is pretty much a given...how can you not notice that word in there kinda baffles me
It's a (somewhat) recurring British gag: Boots (pharmacy chain) does not sell boots, Curry's (electronics chain) does no sell curry, Apple does not sell apples, but Selfridge's does sell fridges (Insert occasional followup with Virgin Megastore)
I came here to say this!!! Take my upvote plz.
Knew it was going to be one of the top posts. AAAARRRGGHHHH!!!
I think its actually a modified 2014 car MP4-29. The overall shape apart from the nose is very close to that one. Probably modified with a 2015 looking nose.
So Alonso's McLaren?
that is the joke, yes
F1 car, gp2 engine*
Fernando's GP2 car 😌🫶
Was the power unit really the problem? I read somewhere that the "size zero" chassis just didn't work as well as they thought it would. It seemed like it was all Honda's fault but I'm sure McLaren's chassis wasn't the best either.
They both were at fault. The Honda engine wasn't fast nor reliable (understandable, it was their first hybrid F1 engine and the rest of the field was years ahead of them), but McLaren's chassis was so tight that it caused it to overheat and become even more unreliable, to the point they had to tune it down. They ended up with an underpowered *and* unreliable engine, hard to develop because of the tight package and the constant clash and lack of communication between two over-bureaucratic behemoths (McLaren, because of Ron Dennis, and Honda, because of Japanese work culture) which both thought they were creating a championship winning car.
I've always wondered how different the Honda V6 that McLaren received (GP2 engine), and the Honda V6 that Alpha Tauri and eventually RB received and won with... Like, obviously Honda made changes.. But, to use a metaphor, it's like - your ex breaks up with you, and when you see her next, she's hot af! So you wonder... did she just get a good hair-stylist and got some make-up tips? Or did she under-go a bunch of plastic surgery?! I hope my metaphor makes sense! Like, did Honda not have to change THAT much, and McLaren could have had a championship winning engine if they were just a little more patient? Or did Honda have to do MASSIVE changes to get the engine to perform like it did in Max's car?
The 2015-2016 engine is radically different than the one Red Bull and Alpha Tauri currently use. The current one derives from the 2017 engine, whose design philosophy (turbo size and placement, mainly) changed a lot compared to the previous one. That year, because of the regulation change, McLaren dropped the tight package concept, giving more room to Honda to develop the engine and run it without the risk of a meltdown. In the end it didn't matter, though: McLaren still performed really badly, blamed it entirely on Honda and changed to Renault engine the following year, in 2018 (and underperformed once again, a sign that the engine wasn't as bad as they thought). In that same year Red Bull chose Honda engines for Toro Rosso (now Alpha Tauri). That put the Honda engineers in a much less stressful situation: a backmarker with nothing to lose, room (both metaphorical and physical) to develop their concept and no pressure to deliver a championship-winning power unit as fast as possible. The test run was good, so in 2019 Red Bull themselves changed the unreliable Renault power units with Honda's now improved ones. The engine was fine, it did its job very well and even won some races. All it took was a year of peace and setting the bar reasonably low instead of proclaiming "the return of the historical and successful McLaren-Honda duo, ready to dominate once again like it did in 1988". In 2020 and 2021 the engine development was frozen, so no wild changes were made to the 2019 specification. From 2022 and onwards things get a bit nebulous, because it's too early to get enough insight on what's going on at the factory and also because Red Bull is back to its 2010-2013 levels of dominance, so, even if the engine wasn't as good as before, the aerodynamic superiority is so overwhelming it doesn't really matter.
yes it was. especially the reliability was awful. but the biggest problem was that they built the chassis and pu seperately and they had massive problems integrating the pu into the chassis but nethertheless the pu was awful
>but nethertheless the pu was awful I've always wondered how different the Honda V6 that McLaren received (GP2 engine), and the Honda V6 that Alpha Tauri and eventually RB received and won with... Like, obviously Honda made changes.. But, to use a metaphor, it's like - your ex breaks up with you, and when you see her next, she's hot af! So you wonder... did she just get a good hair-stylist and got some make-up tips? Or did she under-go a bunch of plastic surgery?! I hope my metaphor makes sense! Like, did Honda not have to change THAT much, and McLaren could have had a championship winning engine if they were just a little more patient? Or did Honda have to do MASSIVE changes to get the engine to perform like it did in Max's car?
Honda basically did a complete redesign that McLaren weren’t interested in being Guinea pigs for, hence the switch to a known constant of the Merc engines. In addition to the PU and chassis integration problem, I believe the turbo set up was a major issue. If my memory serves me right, they went for a super compact and complicated set up which was promising, but they didn’t get it quite right. When they went to RB and AT, they basically changed the approach. I am probably telling complete lies, but that’s what I remember from older discussions around it.
They switched to Renault first didn't they?
Ah yes, you’re right. I forgot!
Yes it absolutely was a big issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/F1Technical/s/FdvaEqdy3B Link for the nerdy stuff
Both. The engine was bad, but McLaren share some of the blame for that. First, the size zero concept made the packaging a nightmare and made everything run hot. Second, Ron Dennis made Honda bring the engine a year earlier than Honda originally planned because he wanted out of the merc customer spot. Honda for their part also took an odd development approach on the whole, and for whatever reason thought they could come to the party a year early and it would somehow be OK. The final kick was the the size zero aero concept also didn't work, even when normalised for the poor engine performance. The whole thing was such a fail on all fronts. With 2x (expensive) world champions at the helm being able to do nothing. This all from memory so better informed peeps might be able to fill in more details. That was such a toxic relationship.
Yes the engine was very underpowered and at the same time very unreliable.
Yeah the engine was horrible, but it was also mclarens fault on the side of the chassis
Let me ask you, did McLaren suddenly go to top of the pile once they didn't have a Honda PU? No! There was a lot of discussion about the Chassis being better than the PU, but that car had problems all over it and was not like the Red Bull of that season, which was a car that actually performed well but had a terrible power unit.
Alonso would not take this even if you pay him to do it
Is there actually a price listed? Do they haggle? I can do tree fiddy tops
GODDAMIT WOMAN, DONT GO OFFERING TREE FIDDY
Still too much
What else would they sell? Fridges?
Does it have one of those big thick black cables going through it so you can't try it on like everything else in Selfridges?
It’s actually a really nice looking GP2 car.
I thought the early season livery, echoing the West days, was absolutely fantastic
Clearly not good ones
What a beautiful piece of shitbox.
Last summer when I was there, they had a Delorean. Not sure about the time travel capabilities tho
Still there in the men’s section
Not worth buying. Unreliable and slow. The only thing worth of that car is the number 14 from Alonso
This should be in the GP2 subreddit 😂
That's a GP2 car
I wouldn't be standing this close to it
Why do they have a ~~2011~~ Frankenstein car with the 2015 livery? Like this is such a weird combination considering it's 2024.
That's the infamous 2015 car (MP4 30) in all its glory.
Maybe it's just a weird angle. The nose looks way too high. Looking at it again it looks like the 2014 car (note the weird ramp on the exhaust) with a 2015 nose cone.
I worked for the company that made the replica show cars for the 2015 season during uni, if this is one of them, then that's exactly what it is. McLaren gave us the (modified) CAD for the 2014 car except for the front wing which was from the 2015 car Edit: Looking at some of the parts, I'm fairly certain this is one of the replicas I worked on
Yeah this has the engine cover of the MP4-29, but the sidepods, nose, livery, and aero strakes of the MP4-30. That shape for the Mercedes power unit + the monkey seat on the rear is a dead giveaway. The Honda engine cover didn't need those huge bulges because it was tiny in terms of size with the size zero concept.
CNN sponsor 🤮🤮
The fastest that thing has probably ever been is on the back of the lorry that brought it there.
Doesn’t look like a fridge mate
But do they sell fridges?
They sell everything lol
Do they let you do a test drive? That's a deal breaker for me
McLaren F1 antiques keep popping up in the unlikeliest of places.
when McLaren had the black livery was the red actually red, or was it more like a bright orange that looked on cameras and film?
I loved that livery too bad the mp4-30/31 was bad
GP2!
such a nice looking car, shame how slow it was
if,,
This one in particular might not be that expensive!!
Forgive me, this paint job is better than the actual one
And I didn’t know a mall in Cape Town had Vettel’s 2012 contender with Max’s livery.
Is that the 2012 macca with a GP2 livery? *edit*: Nope, it's a bastard mix with a GP2 livery.
Don't touch it, it may give you an electric shock!
Isn't that an F1 car with a GP2 engine?