The Singapore Grand Prix in September proved to be a disappointing day for the McLaren-Honda formula one team. Despite improved performance in the race, both drivers – Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button – were forced to retire from top 10 positions, citing gearbox problems that ultimately caused the failure of both cars.

Following the race, McLaren-Honda’s racing director, Eric Boullier, commented that the race speed shown by the drivers was very encouraging, but admitted that the gearbox issues led to a disappointing day, further promising, “We’ll investigate the cause or causes of those issues, in an effort to make sure they never recur.”

Back at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, UK, subsequent analysis of the equipment and dataset revealed that the gearboxes had suffered from excessive overheating, far beyond the design limits of the equipment. The cause, revealed in an article with motorsports.com, was found to be tyre rubber debris and fallen leaves that had been picked up from the track, causing a blockage of the gearbox oil cooler, and a subsequent elevation in temperature.

Temperatures eventually surged to more than 45 percent higher than the equipment had been designed to sustain. This caused the malfunction of the electrical sensors, and meant that the engineers were racing ‘blind’, unable to monitor the temperature increase further. Consequently, the decision was taken to retire both cars on safety grounds, rather than suffer costly on-track failures.

Due to the high temperatures reached, the team was initially worried that the gearboxes would be so severely damaged that they would need to be retired, as McLaren-Honda’s acting CEO Jonathan Neale told Motorsport.com: “When the gearbox operates at those sorts of extreme temperatures, you start to see some pretty catastrophic degradation of the internal components: the steels start to soften, and the gearbox teeth start to break.”

However, much to the surprise of the McLaren engineers, the damage was much less severe than initially feared. In fact, no functionality issues were caused to the gearbox at all – an apparent miracle that McLaren have attributed to the performance of the ExxonMobil gearbox lubricant, Mobilube 1 SHC™ Racing Gear Oil.

“It’s an incredible testament to ExxonMobil and their gearbox oil that we were able to return to the factory, inspect the gearboxes, run them on the dyno, and discover that they’d suffered no functionality issues whatsoever,” said Jonathan Neale.

“When you take into account the loads inside an F1 gearbox and the fact that most of the time the oil is just a mist with the merest thin film on the shields, it’s a credit to Mobil’s technology.”

“The gearbox team looked over our historical data, and those casings endured the highest-ever survivable operating temperatures we’ve ever recorded, yet they were run on the dyno with functionality identical to a brand-new casing."

“We really brought these gearboxes back from the dead – and that’s unbelievable.”

The performance of the custom-made gearbox oil not only saved the gearboxes from failure to enable future use, saving money and improving the safety of performance, but also potentially helped avoid future costly penalties as Formula One rules dictate that every unscheduled gearbox change will require a driver to drop five places on the grid at that meeting.

Grand Prix racing cars are some of the most highly stressed pieces of machinery on the planet. Since 1995, the McLaren team have relied on the proven performance of ExxonMobil products in their quest for optimum efficiency.

Mobilube 1 SHC™ Racing Gear Oil is just one of the high-performance lubricants that McLaren-Honda utilise in the MP4-30 race car. In addition, the team uses:

Mobil SHC™ 500 series hydraulic oil - an essential component of the hydraulic system, controlling gear shift, clutch, steering and Drag Reduction System (DRS) systems and moreMobilith SHC™ 1500 and 220 greases - lubricate the four tripod joints on the driveshaft and the cars ceramic wheel bearings, withstanding extreme temperatures to help maximise speedMobil 1™ Engine Oil - an essential part of the V6 engine, developed to increase power and improve efficiency to maximise performance for McLaren-Honda

The same technology used to develop high performance lubricants for use in the extreme application of Grand Prix motor racing is also available to help maximise the performance of your industrial applications. From gearbox oils to hydraulics to greases, Mobil SHC™ lubricants offer optimum performance in extreme applications, helping to protect equipment and maximise productivity.