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For many, being able to hear the clashing of construction work from their office would be a disruption, but for Andrea Stella, it was a welcome reassurance of progress. That this has now switched to the whirring of the wind tunnel’s fan is music to his ears.

His office had previously been a quiet space, with the old wind tunnel not being used for Formula 1 development at the McLaren Technology Centre since 2010, when we declared it unfit for purpose and began renting Toyota’s wind tunnel in Germany.

When construction began on its successor, it became an unlikely source of soothing white noise. The running of the brand-new, start-of-the-art wind tunnel will now take on that mantel.

A wind tunnel is the highest profile piece of kit a Formula 1 team can own, partially due to its huge size, but also because of the ever-increasing importance of aerodynamics in the current generation of Formula 1 cars. So, it’s hardly a surprise that its impending switch-on has been so hotly anticipated, garnering more external attention than any of the other upgrades to have taken place at the MTC in recent times. 

It's part of a broader and continuous investment plan from McLaren Racing in our facilities over the past few years, which has included significant upgrades to our machine shop, the next-generation simulator and our new composites facility, built in our old team base in Woking – all of which will be equally valuable tools, despite receiving less publicity.

Perhaps some of the wind tunnel’s notoriety comes from the mystery surrounding it. Closely guarded and highly complicated, access isn’t granted lightly – even to us. Today’s guided tour was many weeks in the making. 

The wind tunnel is effectively a racing laboratory in which they investigate the aerodynamic characteristics of a Formula 1 car. It can be used to test things such as aerodynamic efficiency and balance, cooling and specific component optimisation. Understanding the aerodynamic effects of the car can allow the team to make decisions on development routes and the future upgrades seen on track.

Stepping inside the large glass test section of the wind tunnel, a 60% scale model - the maximum size permitted by the rules - of our car is suspended from the ceiling. When in use, it is exposed to a flow of air that helps simulate the conditions of the car on track.

A wind tunnel upgrade had been on the agenda for as long as the old one has been switched off, but it only truly became feasible in 2019, following the completion of a survey into whether our existing wind tunnel could be upgraded rather than replaced entirely. The answer was a resounding yes, and those involved didn’t waste a second in kicking off the project.

“Once the project had been approved, we carried out our design process simultaneously with the demolition of the existing wind tunnel,” Hannah Allan, Engineering Project Manager says. “Demolition involved breaking down the old steelwork into much smaller pieces so that it would fit through the doors and out of the building. Looking at the empty space where the old test section once stood, we thought ‘there is no going back now!”

“It was an enormous project and the biggest investment in Racing since the construction of the MTC,” says Christian Schramm, Director of R&D and Technology. “It was an amazing team effort. There were a lot of sacrifices, extra hours, and extra shifts worked, both during the week and on weekends. This was a complex project, but the team’s hard work ensured we were successful.”

Hannah adds, “We’ve received support from so many areas of the business throughout this project. From R&D, Aerodynamics and Software through to Procurement, Finance and the Exec team, it has been a real company-wide effort to deliver this programme.”

The project was signed off as an upgrade to the original MTC tunnel, rather than a completely new facility. The fact that we wouldn’t need to start from scratch made the project more cost-effective but not easier. The team had a very specific pre-existing space to work with that would dictate the dimensions of the wind tunnel and the delivery of parts, which would need to be broken down into smaller pieces in order to fit into the building, before being bolted and welded back together with the existing tunnel sections, like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

“Due to the space restrictions, the tunnel is as high and as wide as it can possibly be,” explains Christian “That meant that our designs had to be very specific, which is more time-consuming. For example, the rolling road within the test section is as wide as the door it was delivered through – that was one of our considerations.”

Everything within the test section is brand new, but much of the external steelwork structure has been retained in addition to the main fan, which generates the airflow as part of a closed loop.

Airflow generated by the fan is circulated through the four corners of the tunnel: On its journey, it travels through turning vanes and across the heat exchanger, which is used to maintain a consistent air temperature. Importantly, the air also passes through a number of flow conditioning devices to remove any turbulence before it is accelerated through the nozzle section to the required speed of 50m/s - also maximum speed permitted by the rules - as it reaches the model in the test section. This is where the “magic happens.”

Aesthetically, one wind tunnel looks pretty much the same as the next – it’s the functionality and the size that differs. Our old wind tunnel was outdated and too small. As F1 cars have gotten bigger, wind tunnels have needed to as well.

The original tunnel was designed to operate with a 50% scale model of our car. In order to improve the reliability of our test results, we switched to a 60% scale model, however, the increased size was on the verge of being too big for the wind tunnel, which had the opposite effect.

“This makes a big difference,” says Alan Stovold, Senior Manager R&D Facilities. “The rolling road will move at the same speed as the air in the tunnel. We can then move the model into different positions to simulate certain track positions and measure the aerodynamic forces on it. If a part of the model car is too close to the walls, you are messing up the airflow, and therefore your data is incorrect.”

When the new wind tunnel was switched on, it marked the end of a near-four-year-long project and the conclusion of our time renting Toyota’s wind tunnel. The Cologne-based facility played a crucial role in our recent MCL60 upgrades, and its impact will continue to be felt in the packages we are putting together for the remainder of the year.

Despite its pivotal role in our recent success, there are several benefits to bringing our wind tunnel testing capability back in-house. The main advantage of this upgrade is having the facility on site. From an operational efficiency perspective, removing the time required to ship components, as well as having the full team onsite to support, will play an important role in increasing our ability to develop the car faster in the future. “It will be a big leap forward,” says Christian.

As well as removing the travel and shipping costs associated with the 388-mile round trip, CEO Zak Brown has previously highlighted that there are significant savings to be made by operating our own tunnel rather than renting a third-party facility.

Our wind tunnel will allow us to more closely simulate cornering by lessening the impact that the tunnel’s walls have on off-body aerodynamic airflow and replicating what the car feels when on track.

An old-specification McLaren model was used for the basic correlation of the wind tunnel ahead of the Summer Shutdown, which was the final stage of the process. Now complete, we notified the FIA that we would be leaving Toyota’s wind tunnel and moving into our new one. This is an important step in the evolution of McLaren Racing and the acceleration of our 2024 car design.