2020 Mclaren 620r on 2040-cars

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Santander sticks with McLaren amid sponsorship exodus

Sponsors have been leaving McLaren one after the other as the team's performance has dropped off drastically over the past few seasons. But Santander is sticking with it for another few years. The banking group first teamed with McLaren in 2007. It started sponsoring Ferrari in 2009 and originally planned to drop McLaren, but ended up sticking with – and continues sponsoring – both teams today. Under the renewed contract, Santander will continue supporting both the British team and its driver Jenson Button for another five years, through the end of 2020. The news was undoubtedly welcomed in Woking amid the exodus of several other sponsors. Former title sponsor Vodafone left before the start of last season. Longtime sponsor TAG Heuer is leaving for Red Bull. After more than three decades with McLaren, Hugo Boss switched to Mercedes earlier this year. And Johnnie Walker is expected to leave as well to join Aston Martin over at Force India. McLaren did pick up sponsorship from CNN, which previously backed Caterham prior to the team folding. It also recently signed the Chandon champagne brand and extended its deal with Hilton hotels. Other partners include oil giant ExxonMobil, business technology leader SAP, multinational accounting firm KPMG, and Segafredo coffee. Once a championship frontrunner with eight constructors' championships, 12 drivers' titles, and 182 grand prix victories to its name, McLaren has dropped off drastically in its performance over the past few seasons. It finished the 2011 season in second place, 2012 in third, 2013 and '14 in fifth, and this past season in ninth. Much of that drop in performance can be attributed to teething problems with the new Honda engine package. But without a title sponsor for two seasons now and with many others leaving, McLaren might find itself without the resources it needs to rediscover its former winning form. McLaren-Honda and Jenson Button renew partnership with Santander McLaren-Honda is pleased to announce the extension of its partnership with leading bank Santander UK plc. The agreement is set to continue the partnership for a further five years until the end of 2020, with British driver and 2009 F1™ World Champion, Jenson Button, continuing to feature prominently in Santander campaigns. Having first partnered together in 2007, McLaren-Honda and Santander have enjoyed a long and successful relationship.

McLaren 720S: First look at the new hot-blooded Englishman

"Well, they're very committed and passionate," that's how a spokesman described McLaren's engineering team. Trouble is, English passion tends to be marked by a raised eyebrow, Elgar's understated Nimrod, and elegant motorcars finished in m idnight blue. Italy trumps that with arms flung wide, Rossini's operas, and blood-red cars howling down the endless straights of Emilia-Romagna. Perhaps that's the problem for McLaren, which seems to have so far built cars appreciated by race drivers and finicky poindexters, rather than those who like a Ferrari, Lamborghini, or a Maserati because of the shape, the style, the passion, and the operatic exhaust noise. Geography doesn't help (nor do engines that sound like leaf blowers). Woking in Surrey was never going to roll off the tongue quite like Sant' Agata, Bolognese, or Maranello. All this might be about to change this afternoon, however, with the launch of the second-generation of the Super Series car, the 720S, at the Geneva Motor Show. Super Series is the middle of a hierarchy of three similar McLaren car ranges: all mid-engined with carbon-fiber tubs sharing similar hard points for the aluminum, carbon-fiber, and Sheet-Moulded-Composite (SMC) coachwork and sharing the same Ricardo-built V8 bi-turbo and seven-speed twin-clutch transmission driving the rear wheels. Known as 'entry, core and high' by engineers, it starts in the Sports Series, runs through Super and into Ultimate. (Of which there has only been one example, the 2013 P1, although the new "Hyper GT" is promised in 2019.) These cars are largely based on McLaren Automotive's inaugural car, the 2011 MP4-12C. But the 720S marks a new generation and is claimed to be 90 percent all-new. The more it changes, the more it stays the same, wrote novelist Jean-Baptiste Karr, whose 19th-century musing applies to the 21st-century McLaren. Stuff that's essentially the same: The carbon-fiber tub, though it trades the predecessor 650S's aluminum superstructure for carbon fiber. The engine is the familiar Shoreham-made, 90-degree, quad-cam, dry-sump, twin-turbo, but it's been stroked from 3.8 to 4.0 liters, with two Mitsubishi Heavy Industries twin-scroll turbochargers, similar in concept to those used in the P1. These should be capable of providing more boost lower down the rev range, answering criticisms of the old car being too peaky.

2016 Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix recap: another wild show on and off track

Normally we use this space to provide a lengthy recap of the weekend's Formula 1 race, but we're going to try something different since most folks reading this know what happened at the Shanghai International Circuit on Sunday. Instead, we'll alight on what we saw as the big issues in and around the race. Let us know what you think in Comments. Proper qualifying is back. Thank goodness. It only took a month of embarrassment to fix it. And so is passing! For the third race in a row, big performance improvements at the ten teams behind Mercedes-AMG Petronas and a wider tire selection at this race graced us with opening stints filled with dicing cars. Seeing the McLarens on screen doesn't make us cringe. Manor doesn't only make the global feed when it's being lapped. We've been complaining about parade races for so long that we forgot excitement was possible without rain or wholesale regulation changes. Yes, Mercedes is still the king of the jungle, but there are some other proper midfield beasts on the hunt, too. Malfunctions up and down the grid did help the show in Shanghai, like Lewis Hamilton suffering perpetual troubles, Nico Hulkenberg's runaway front wheel which red-flagged Q2, and Sebastian Vettel's and Kimi Raikkonen's flubbed hot laps in Q3 that let Daniel Ricciardo slip by into second on the grid. Come race day things went all Grand Theft Auto at Turn 1 on the opening lap, sending some of the best cars to the pits. Then came Ricciardo's puncture while leading, then came the Safety Car – all by Lap 5. Nico Rosberg got 38 seconds of airtime on the way to victory – at the start and the finish, and that happened to be his margin of victory, too – otherwise he was a ghost. Everyone else was struggling and juggling. Rosberg's win at the Bahrain Grand Prix put the German at five consecutive victories going back to last year's Mexican Grand Prix. The history books show that any driver who's won five straight contests has gone on to win the championship. With his triumph in China, the German has won the season's first three races, the history books again show that the other nine drivers who've pulled that off have gone on to win the championship. Rosberg, 36 points ahead of his teammate in the standings, is having none of it. He said of the other victors, "But they didn't have Lewis Hamilton as their team-mate." Perhaps Mercedes was right not to make an engine deal with Red Bull last season.