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HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
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AUGUST 2012
91
only thingwe could dowas bring notably be er per-
formance and feel than the competitors,” says Paul
Burnham, the vehicle dynamicsmanager on the 12C.
This meant looking to the technology used by
McLaren’s Formula 1 racing team, founded almost
50 years ago. The two worlds hardly seem compat-
ible—while the 12C’s $230,000 price tag may appear
gargantuan, that amount barely covers the cost of a
gearboxononeofMcLaren’sFormula 1 race cars—but
history is full of examples of race technologyfiltering
down into street-legal production cars. The rearview
mirror, for instance, was invented for the Indianapo-
lis 500 in 1911; paddle shi ers on the steering wheel
came out of a Formula 1 car in 1986; and a panoply of
safety innovations, fromseat belts to chassis crumple
zones, were all track-tested in front of paying crowds
before they landed in your Chevy Celebrity.
McLaren hopes the next such crossover will be
a technology known as “brake steer,” which it first
deployed in Finnish driverMikaHäkkinen’s car dur-
ing the 1997 Formula 1 season. Designed to prevent
understeer—in which the front tires plow straight
a h e a d w h e n
they should be
turning—brake
steer causes the
le -hand brakes
to apply more
pressure than
t ho s e on t he
right, effectively
s t e e r i n g t h e
car when the
steering wheel
can’t. Häkkinen
notched his final
victory with this
radical technol-
ogy at the 1998
AustralianGrand
Prix, a fast, 16-turn track inMelbourne’s Albert Park.
At the following race, in Brazil, Formula 1 officials
banned brake steer, deeming it an unfair advantage.
Brake steer remained on the shelf until Burnham
and his 160 fellow engineers set about conceiving
the 12C. “Brake steer was li ed straight off the race
car,” he says. “As a technology, it was so far ahead of
MCLAREN
SOUGHTTOMAKE
A “REALISTIC,
COMFORTABLE,
EVERYDAY” CAR.
JUSTONETHAT
HAPPENSTO
COST$230K
ANDCOMEWITH
OUTLAWED
FORMULA1
TECHNOLOGY.
DOOR PRIZE
From top, the
MP4-12C beckons; scenes from
the futuristic McLaren factory in
England; the supercar unleashed