Hamilton and Button unveil McLaren's car for 2012 season

McLaren hopes to challenge Red Bull with its new car (Image credit: McLaren)

McLaren Mercedes needed a radically revolutionised car to be able to challenge the dominance of the Red Bull. Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton today unveiled McLaren’s latest challenger which is called MP4-27 at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, UK. With the new car, McLaren hopes to be able to challenge the Red Bull in the upcoming season.

Hamilton described the MP4-27 as “the finest-looking car we’ve had for some time”. His fellow British racer, Jenson Button, said, “I want to say thanks to the guys who have been working flat out throughout the winter to develop this car. Testing is now very important. We’ve got to come out of the box and be strong.”

The car that was unveiled yesterday is a test car and will be updated and developed with time. At present, the car doesn’t look very different than the last year’s version. Explaining the changes in the car, Hamilton said, “We’ve changed the sidepods. We had the L-shaped sidepods last year but the car is generally the same. Obviously the nose is a little bit different to last year. We’ve changed the wing mirrors a little bit, so hopefully we’ll be able to see a lot better.” Hamilton was involved in a number of accidents with Ferrari‘s Felipe Massa last season due to the wing mirror.

Interestingly, MP4-27 doesn’t feature the ‘ugly nose’ that Caterham’s car (launched last week) or Ferrari’s car (to be launched on 4th) carries. Many cars are expected to feature such flat nose because of a change in the rules requiring lower nose height in the cars.

The major changes seem to have been done at the rear of the car. “The back of the car, particularly, is a lot neater than it was last year. It’s much, much tighter so the focus has been on making it as tight as possible to improve aerodynamics,” he said.

Team technical director Paddy Lowe, however, stressed that there is a lot of changes that has happened to the car and the looks may be misleading. “This car looks quite similar (to last year’s) but underneath there’s a great deal of change,” he said. “And when you add that up, you have a car that is quicker. We have done a lot of work round the back end, it’s a lot tidier there.”