The McLaren MP4/12 was the Formula One car with which the McLaren team competed in the 1997 Formula One World Championship. The chassis was designed by Steve Nichols, Neil Oatley and Henri Durand with Mario Illien designing the bespoke Ilmor engine. It was driven by Mika Häkkinen and David Coulthard.
Externally, the car was a more streamlined and refined evolution of the previous year's MP4/11, with engines supplied by Mercedes-Benz for the third year of the Anglo-German alliance. Testing was carried out with the cars painted in the traditional McLaren orange, before a striking new silver livery was launched to celebrate the team's new sponsorship deal with West, replacing the red and white of Marlboro that the team had used since 1974.
The car proved extremely promising and could have won at least seven races during the course of the season, but reliability proved troublesome, in particular that of the engine. The FO110E engine was replaced with the FO110F engine from the French Grand Prix, but the trouble happened frequently to either engine. This proved frustrating, especially after Coulthard won the first race of the season in Australia, McLaren's first win since losing Ayrton Senna and also Mercedes's first F1 win since the 1955 Italian Grand Prix. The situation was exacerbated by Häkkinen retiring from three further races whilst in the lead - all from engine failures - including at the Nürburgring, where the team lost a comfortable one-two finish when both cars retired with identical failures within a lap of each other. Coulthard also lost a certain victory – at Montreal, with a clutch problem after a precautionary pitstop just a few laps before the race prematurely ended. However, Coulthard did manage to win again at Monza.
Best Lap Times
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