The McLaren-Honda MP4/4:
The Best Formula 1 Car Ever?

mclaren-honda mp4/4 the best formula 1 car ever honda engine room

We all know about the McLaren-Honda MP4/4.

The numbers say it dominated a Single Formula 1 season like no other:
15 wins from 16 Grand Prix in 1988 and coming within two laps of a clean sweep;
15 poles; 10 1-2 finishes; 1003 laps led from 1031.

So what was it about the MP4/4?

Well, even in this most complicated of pursuits, F1 explanations are often simple: Best drivers, engine, team and chassis.

McLaren’s redoubtable boss Ron Dennis ensured that for 1988 he had these in place.

×

“It was typical of how Ron went about things...Like a skilled card player, Ron had patiently gathered a killer hand and was about to lay his aces.”

Alan Henry - Late Formula 1 Journalist

At Monza’s 1987 Italian Grand Prix McLaren had a big announcement. Ayrton Senna was joining for 1988. Senna had firm status as F1’s next big thing, and was sick of disappointing Lotuses. Driver and team had courted each other for some time. 

He’d join an all-star line-up with incumbent Alain Prost, as firm in his status as F1’s standard-bearer. One of F1’s most magnificent – and, in time, notorious – driver pairings was born.

The Monza announcement got better from the McLaren perspective. Honda – provider of F1’s quickest and most fuel-efficient engines – was heading to McLaren too, ditching Williams controversially. This was another relationship long in the making; wooing had been going on since 1986.

“Quite simply, Honda raised the bar in Formula 1,” Henry continued. “Whereas an engine, even a turbo, had often been previously regarded as something of an oily mechanical component bolted into the back of a car, Honda turned engine-building into a modern science.”

“Back in the late ’80s, I remember a small army of white-shirted Honda technicians – led by their diminutive but assertive leader Osamu Goto – assembling at every race. I remember rooms full of computers, busily printing out reams of data. I remember flight case after flight case all being busily shuttled between airport and base. This was an arms race that Honda clearly intended to win.”

Honda’s board had concluded the company was too small to take on rivals Nissan and Toyota in mass production volume, so instead sought a worldwide image of technical excellence. Sinking $50m a year into F1 was integral. It was on another level.

“There’s no magic in motor racing, you know,” Nigel Mansell muttered at 1988’s end. “Honda have spent who knows how many million dollars on this engine programme… I’m quite sure Honda can be beaten, but only by another engine manufacturer competing on the same level.”

Honda found a kindred spirit in McLaren, which likewise had raised the bar in resource and organisation over the preceding years. And McLaren-Honda, pretty much alone, decided to produce an all-new car and turbo engine tailored for 1988’s rules.

This wasn’t a no-brainer. One part at least wasn’t supposed to work. This was the final year before turbo engines were banned for 1989, and 1988’s stage of the phase-out was jarring. Boost was cut from 4 bar (1 bar representing ambient atmospheric pressure) to 2.5; fuel for turbo cars had a swingeing 195 litres to 150 reduction – with no in-race refuelling and no limit for non-turbos; plus a turbo’s car minimum weight was 40kg higher than non-turbo rivals.

“I promise you, gentlemen, in 1988, no way for the turbos,” boomed FIA president Jean-Marie Balestre. And 1988’s competing teams appeared to agree, as only six out of 18 used a turbo engine (and only three were frontrunners), down from an all-turbo field two years previously.

Yet Honda’s number crunching was clear: Turbo remained the way to go. Honda focussed aggressively on power and fuel efficiency. Ferrari’s designer John Barnard reckons the Honda 1.5 litre V6 had “probably about 150bhp more than anyone else”. Fuel consumption was rarely an issue either.

mclaren-honda mp4/4 engine honda engine room

The fine engine was allied to a fine chassis. Barnard, ultra-successful with McLaren, had left for Ferrari near the end of 1986, and the equally-prestigious Gordon Murray was hired instead. This was the first McLaren he was involved in properly, plus several talented figures below, perhaps supressed by autocratic Barnard, had more freedom.

And the MP4/4’s concept was exceptional – a low-line chassis with the driver reclined more. Its several benefits included a lower centre of gravity, less drag and more undisturbed airflow to the rear wing. Honda, in step, produced an engine 28mm lower than the already-compact predecessor.

mclaren-honda mp4/4 chassis honda engine room

There is dispute over where the low-line idea originated. Murray insists it came from perfecting his low-line, but troublesome, 1986 Brabham BT55. McLaren’s chief designer Steve Nichols insists it was a natural evolution of the ‘87 McLaren, with the impact of rule changes like the smaller fuel tank. Whatever though, the idea was devastating.

“We had a massive increase in aerodynamic performance, about 15% which usually if you’ve got two or three percent you have a public holiday,” Murray says. “We also knew from the wind tunnel that it was going to be good. The aerodynamic efficiency, that's lift over drag, was much better and the downforce was pretty good.”

The MP4/4’s creation wasn’t entirely plain sailing. As indicated by the Monza confirmation of Honda’s switch, work on the ’88 McLaren could only begin in earnest in the previous August.

McLaren chose – not for the first or last time – to maximise its homework period, and the car made its on-track debut just nine days before round one’s opening practice. Amid some relief no doubt, the MP4/4 flew immediately, first in Prost’s hands going more than a second faster than anyone else had managed in the entire test week, then Senna tearing another second off. The writing, not least for McLaren’s rivals, was on the wall.

learn more about our racing heritage here honda engine room

mclaren-honda mp4/4 schematic honda engine room

One MP4/4 part was especially frantic. “The other radical thing on the car was the transmission,” Murray continues, “because in lowering the engine the normal split between the two gear shafts in the gearbox meant that the driveshafts were completely the wrong angle. At the last minute [we did a] brand new gearbox.”

“That’s the one thing I thought that could let us down,” Murray admits, “but actually it ran perfectly the whole season.”

You can add that the MP4/4’s reliability more generally was near bulletproof. There was only one mechanical retirement in 1988, when Prost’s spark plug failed at Monza. This would be an excellent record today – it was incredible in an age when breakdowns were much more common.

The gearbox hints at another secret of the MP4/4. To suggest, as Barnard has, that the car’s success owed almost entirely to the Honda is a little disingenuous. As Lotus had the same engines, and was nowhere. 

Lotus as intimated had long lost its way technically, plus crucially it chose not to create a new gearbox, instead tilting its existing gearbox and the engine. This negated much of the lower engine’s benefits, as well as meant a power-sapping driveshaft angle. Murray has called McLaren’s tailored gearbox “the key to success of the MP4/4”.

This though touches upon another possible aspect of the MP4/4’s domination. “It was very good, but against what?” asks Barnard of the car. Williams and Benetton ran non-turbo engines; Ferrari a patched-up version of its 1987 car, as its 639 wasn’t ready. Lotus we’ve mentioned.

Nichols had the grace to admit this was a factor. “A lot of the reason for our success has been simply us and Honda doing a good job, but this has been emphasised by the other teams being in such relative disarray,” he noted.

In one sense the MP4/4’s legacy was zero. The rules changed utterly for 1989 meaning the car could be raced no more. It didn’t lead wider future chassis design especially either, instead another 1988 car, Adrian Newey’s sculpted March 881, was much more of a trend-setter.

The 1988 year however started a run of four championship doubles for McLaren-Honda. Honda underlined its potency by producing an imperious 3.5 litre normally-aspirated engine too.

And there is a tangible legacy. As noted team and engine supplier alike raised the bar in collegiate organisation, resource and commitment. Opponents eventually had to follow.

Moreover the MP4/4’s legend very much lives on as the ultimate, and in a way that dominant cars since have not replicated. As noted it only just missed out on a clean sweep. Perhaps, as with cricket totem Don Bradman’s 99.94 average, this poignancy adds to the legend. But, as we’ve outlined, it’s about much more than that.