McLaren should follow Ferrari footsteps by adopting an in-house power unit by 2028

Mclaren have never had their own power unit in ANY of their racing cars or in ANY of their road cars.....and they never will.

RedBull beat them to the punch and they don't make road cars. Their an energy drink company.

 

McLaren is a small constructor, not a big car manufacturer, hence it has less resources and finance.
McLaren has used Cosworth, TAG-Porsche, Honda, Peugeot, Renault, and Mercedes engines.
They have always tried to get the best engine possible when available, or the best deal.
For years they were considered Mercedes factory team, before MB started its own team.
There is pros and cons for a team to making their own engine: it is left with no choice, but use what it has.
Ferrari has been making its engine since 1950, but it doesn't mean it was the best every year, far from it.
It's a bit undertaking for Red Bull to make their own engines. Christian Horner said that he would have prefered that Honda never announced they were leaving F1 (only to change their mind later !). Apart from the cost, RB is now bound to use their own PUs; what happends if they are not so good? Who will they turn to ?

For its road car, McLaren used an atmo V12 BMW on the Murray-designed F1 (a car that won Le Mans).
Since, they have bought from Nissan the design of a racing V8 turbo which has been re-engineered for production by Ricardo. I think the last hybrid turbo V6 was designed by Ricardo too.

 

True, but ANY upgrades to the engine will result in epic failure because of the tight engineering tolerances to save weight i.e. the connecting rods for example. They have an H-design pattern to the connecting rods. This pattern is selected to save weight given a certain horsepower and boost that the turbos provide to the engine. IF you increase the boost of the turbos by adding bigger turbos for more horsepower, you will likely bend one or more connecting rods due to the load being increased on the connecting rod(s) resulting in engine failure.

Some people have taken their Mclarens(675s, 725s, P1s) for a complete redesign of the connecting rods(no H-pattern), piston heads for extra strength due to wanting an increase in horsepower and torque....like 1000hp to 1200hp and 900ft lbs to 1100ft lbs by adding bigger turbos.

I know this because a certain individual on YouTube bought a flooded P1 and took it apart. This individual also has a custom 675LT and upgraded it and he blew the engine where one of the connecting rods and piston blew a hole thru the block. The P1 has the same design regarding the connecting rods as well. He took both cars to get both their engines re-engineered and upgraded for better performance and reliability. Btw, this individual is doing away with the P1's hybrid system because it's "obsolete" already and strictly going V-6 twin turbos and bumping up the horsepower to 1100hp....also to save weight by getting rid of the battery pack from the hybrid.

 

All Mclaren engines since 2011 have been built at the Ricardo factory in Shoreham-by-Sea, over 34000 powertrains produced.

Arrows didn't have their own engine in 1998-1999 it was a rebranded Hart 1030 motor.

 

It would make sense, but with what money?

 

Developing an F1 power unit today is arguably harder than ever. The entire PU is a rather complex system consisting of complex subsystems. The required efficiency (and thus power) levels are unprecedented. The resulting engineering challenges can not be solved by throwing money at it, due to the budget cap, ban of exotic materials and permitted number of units to be used during a season.

In addition to that, some of the subsystems and technical solutions are pretty much unique to F1, so the number of people who have knowledge, experience and skills for these is severely limited. (Think "less than 10 people worldwide". Some engineers are traded like ball players. For other topics, there is quite a bit of outsourcing going on, which leads to surprising and bizare situations.)

Larger OEMs like Ford, GM, Audi or Porsche have very deep pockets in terms of money, talent, race engine experience and industry connections. I would imagine that McLaren's resources are comparatively limited.

In summary: that move would not be outright impossible, but certainly expensive and risky.
Having said that, things might become a bit easer for the 2026 PUs in some aspects, but obviously more difficult in others.

 

The solution for McLaren would be to sub-contract the conception of their racing engines, rather than doing it all themselves. It takes lots of investment and a long time before building a technical team.
There are still engineering firms that could do that (Ilmor, ART, Cosworth, Gibson, Ricardo, etc ...).
They have experience in designing powerplants, and the infrastructures to build, test and develop them.
Then, they could just tag them McLaren, since they would own the intellectual properties.
That's also the way Mercedes badged their Ilmor-built engines for years until they bought part of it.
Years ago, McLaren used Porsche to create their first V6 turbo engine, badged TAG-Porsche, but after a few years they turned to Honda, then Peugeot, Mercedes and won titles as clients.
So maybe it's not essential for a team to make its own engines.