The McLaren M2B was the McLaren team's first Formula One racing car, used during the 1966 season. It was conceived in 1965 and preceded by the M2A development car. Designed by Robin Herd, the innovative but problematic Mallite material was used in its construction. The car was powered by Ford and Serenissima engines but both lacked power and suffered from reliability issues.
Driven by team founder Bruce McLaren, the M2B had a short Grand Prix career, entering six races and starting only four. It scored the team's first point at the and two more points at the .
Background and development
Bruce McLaren Motor Racing was founded in 1963; Bruce McLaren was a factory driver for the Cooper motor racing team which competed in Formula One, the highest level of international single-seater competition. For two years the McLaren team had raced in the Tasman Series, a competition for single-seaters that ran during the Formula One world championship off-season, and in various sports car races. Bruce McLaren continued to race in Grands Prix (i.e. Formula One championship races) for Cooper, but by 1965 the team's performances were worsening and so he decided to build his own Formula One car to race the following year. Despite being a skilled engineer himself, McLaren enlisted Robin Herd to design the car. Herd was an aerospace engineer who had previously worked at the National Gas Turbine Establishment (NGTE) where he had been involved with the Concorde project. In September 1965 the M2A development car was completed. Powered by a 4.5 litre Oldsmobile V8 engine, it was used to test Herd's design ideas and Firestone's tyres. With McLaren still employed by Cooper, the McLaren team initially denied that they were building a Formula One competitor, claiming that the M2A was purely a tyre test bed.
At the factory in Colnbrook, construction started on at least two M2B chassis, whilst a third was possibly started but not completed. By December 1965 the M2A had completed over of testing and two race engines were ready to be installed in the M2B, Bruce McLaren testing the car at Goodwood Circuit. Also that month, the design team was joined by Herd's former NGTE colleague Gordon Coppuck; Coppuck later became chief designer at McLaren. In February 1966 further testing was carried out in California, United States in anticipation of the start of the world championship season in May.
Design
The M2B was a mid-engined rear-wheel drive monocoque design, monocoques having been popularised by Lotus's 25 of 1962. Influenced by his aerospace experience, Herd built the chassis with Mallite, a material that had originally been designed for internal panelling in aircraft. Mallite is a composite of balsa wood bonded between two sheets of aluminium alloy that is much stiffer than ordinary aluminium alloy, a useful characteristic for a racing car. However, the material proved to be difficult to bend into the curved shapes needed and so, whilst the M2A prototype was made entirely of Mallite except for the steel bulkheads, on the M2B it was utilised only for the inner and upper skins, the remainder being aluminium alloy. Mallite was also complicated to repair after crash damage. Its use did mean though that the chassis was the stiffest then built for an open-cockpit car, with torsional rigidity of nearly per degree. Glass-reinforced plastic bodywork covered the nose, cockpit and engine. Fuel was stored in rubber bag tanks situated within the moncoque.
Herd's knowledge of aerodynamics and Bruce McLaren's experience with Ford's sports car racing programme combined to spur the team into experimenting with aerodynamic bodywork. The M2A was fitted with a rear wing that produced downforce – downwards pressure on the car and tyres which allows faster cornering – and reduced lap times by three seconds at a test at Zandvoort circuit in November 1965, two and a half years before the Brabham and Ferrari teams eventually debuted wings in a Grand Prix. The team intended to use the wing on the M2B, but the engine problems that occurred prevented this.
The suspension was a conventional wishbone-based arrangement with inboard coilover springs and dampers at the front and outboard coilover springs and dampers at the rear. Braking was provided by Girling discs within diameter magnesium alloy wheels. The wheelbase measured exactly , and front and rear track was and , respectively.