Ilmor Engineering Building the Mercedes-Benz F1 engine that provides the horsepower that motivates the McLaren cars is the work of Ilmor Engineering. Paul Morgan, the 'mor' in Ilmor, has a love of engines that began when he was boy growing up in Brixworth, near Northampton. He was born into an engineering environment and influenced by his father's business of manufacturing automotive components and his hobby of restoring vintage cars. From the age of 15 Paul began rebuilding ancient automobiles himself in his father's workshop. Among his restoration projects were a Talbot-Lago Grand Prix car and a Lagonda Rapide, both of which he raced in competition. When he graduated from university in 1970 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering he found employment with the racing engine specialist Cosworth Engineering, where he could indulge himself in his twin passions of engines and competition.
Many years ago, in the streets of the town of Chur in Switzerland, the much more subdued sounds coming out the exhaust pipes of passing saloon cars captured the imagination of a little boy named Mario Illien, whose parents never owned a car. Before long, by listening intently with his eyes closed, Mario could distinguish the exhaust notes made by different makes of cars and eventually he could even differentiate between models made by the same manufacturer.
Today, while standing at the pit wall at race tracks around the world, Mario Illien's finely tuned hearing can immediately detect the identity of a passing F1 car from its screaming exhaust note. For Mario, no car sounds sweeter than a McLaren, the one with the Mercedes-Benz V10 in the back, the engine he designed.
Early in his life the boy who listened to passing cars in Switzerland resolved to find a career that would enable him to become intimately involved with the magic forces of the internal combustion engine, particularly those used for racing, the highest expression of the art. Mario was fascinated by the technical descriptions of the engines he read about in racing magazines brought home by his brother, a motorsport enthusiast. He watched F1 racing on television, and as a spectator at hillclimb events in Switzerland, where racing is banned, the sounds of the cars sent him into raptures. As a youth he found spare time employment with a Swiss engine-builder and he also worked for a while as a mechanic for Jo Bonnier, the Swiss-based Swedish driver who was killed at Le Mans in 1972.
Before he went to university Mario designed an engine for Formula Two racing and another for motorcycle sidecar competition. In 1976, after getting his degree in Mechanical Engineering, Mario's first project was to design a solar heating system for his parent's house. In 1979, after a term as a designer of diesel engines for a Swiss manufacturer, his urge to create engines for racing inspired him to move to England, where he joined Cosworth Engineering. There, he worked with Paul Morgan and in 1984 they went out on their own, joining forces and their names to establish Ilmor Engineering in Brixworth.
"Our pockets were empty, but our heads were full of ideas," Mario remembers of those early days, when they first set up shop in Paul Morgan's house. "All we needed was a customer." The knight-in-shining armour of a customer took the form of the American IndyCar team entrant, Roger Penske. A shrewd and successful businessman, as well as a former racing driver, it took Penske only a brief audience with Illien and Morgan to become a believer in their vision. He became a 50 percent shareholder in the budding Ilmor enterprise and a year later arranged for Chevrolet to take half his share, a quarter interest in the company, in exchange for Ilmor developing a Chevrolet-badged IndyCar engine, initially for the Penske team. With funding from the automotive giant the Chevrolet V8 was a roaring success, regularly winning IndyCar championships and, in 1991, powering the winning cars in all 17 races in the American-based series. Ilmor also supplied engines to several F1 teams, beginning in 1989, though the company's involvement at the pinnacle of motorsport remained sporadic due to budget constraints. In 1993, after 86 IndyCar race wins, Chevrolet ended its 10-year agreement with Ilmor and Mercedes-Benz took its place. When this partnership was equally and immediately successful, with the Mercedes engine winning the prestigious Indianapolis 500 event in its race debut, the links were forged that in 1994 were extended to include the Mercedes return to F1 racing.
For the 1995 season, when Mercedes and McLaren would put their new partnership to the Grand Prix test, the first completely new engine especially built to suit the McLaren chassis was fired up at Brixworth on the 16th of January at 4:35 in the afternoon. It was christened the Mercedes-Benz FO110 - 'FO' for Formula One, '1' for the first in the series and '10' for the number of cylinders. For Mario Illien it was a emotional moment - only 19 short weeks after he first sketched out the details of his 'baby.' His eyes glisten at recalling that "incredibly intense, exciting and thoughtful moment.
"There was obviously quite a bit of tension, especially since the first race was only a few weeks away. If there was a major problem we might have run out of time to solve it. And standing there, just before pressing the starter button, there was a prickly feeling. Then it sprung into life and everybody was very happy. The whole factory was there and we sipped champagne. Today, that is still quite an exciting moment to remember."
Though Mario delights in the exotic sounds made by his creations he doesn't necessarily see them as works of art. He appreciates them more as "harmonious objects." An engine might also be an attractive arrangement of thousands of pieces of metal but his affection for it is only temporary. "The problem I have when I look at an engine I did, say two or three years ago, is that it seems obsolete now. Almost like old junk. I sometimes wonder how I could have done it that way. It's not something I cherish, because it's something from the past."
The relentless pace of F1 engine development, where today is already yesterday's tomorrow, leaves little time for nostalgia or sentiment for those at the forefront of the continual quest for improvement. One thing Mario does look back upon fondly is the creative process, which in his case once meant marathon sessions at the drawing board wherein he would lock himself away from all distractions and work for 16 to 18 hours a day, seven days a week. He did this in his office at home, where his intense concentration was only interrupted by occasional taps on the door when his wife brought him food.
Nowadays, though he is still responsible for creating the original concepts, Mario spends more time presiding over the efforts of his select team of designers. The F1 project manager is Simon Armstrong, Stuart Grove is in charge of design detail and Max de Novellis looks after development. Including the group handling IndyCar projects there are nearly 50 people involved in engine design and development at Ilmor, each of them especially selected for their capability to perform to their maximum under the pressure of limited time. To assess their potential prospective employees are given a test, devised by Mario and reminiscent of the way he once spent those many solitary hours on his drawing board at home. Mario puts the candidates alone in a room, provides them with a pencil and paper and asks them to design an engine component that has to fit into a given assembly. They've got half a day to come up with a solution.
"Technical qualifications are a good baseline," says Mario of what it takes to for him to hire an engine designer, "but in discussion with somebody I find it difficult to assess what they are truly capable of doing. You can do all the studies at school but you also need flair and intuition. Our test helps evaluate how they can perform here. It is important that we pick people who love to compete, have a lot of self-motivation and can think for themselves." Yet these people also have to work together, like the individual components that must fit harmoniously into a given engine assembly. Taking on the Mercedes F1 project in 1993 meant Ilmor had to double its workforce over a period of about 18 months. In the face of such rapid expansion there was a pressing need to introduce new recruits into the system, and to each other, and to make them feel at home and to organise everyone into a united effort while maintaining the highest levels, and standards, of production. Among the hardest workers at Ilmor are the numerically-controlled mechanical robots used to manufacture 98 percent of all the components used by the company, and the machinery grinds away 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But the strength of the company rests with the human side of the operation. And, as Paul Morgan notes, "It's much more difficult to get a good group of people working well together as a team, than it is to get a group of machines up to speed."
Fitting the over 300 employees (319 at the start of the 1998 season) into the scheme of things at Ilmor requires a carefully co-ordinated effort for them to become efficient cogs in the wheel. To help foster team spirit, as well as to perform the practical function of putting names to new faces, photographs of the personnel, with their names beneath them, are posted on the notice board at the entrance to each department in the factory. Each department operates like an individual team and the notice board also has on it a forecast of the production goals for the month. In this way everyone knows where they stand every day, which in this business is invariably under the starting gun of a race against time.
Another vital part of the Ilmor team is based at Stuttgart-Unterturkheim, where Mercedes engineers and technicians put the Brixworth-produced engines through their paces on a transient dynomometer. With the computer-controlled dyno the engines are subjected to full Grand Prix race distances, including gearchanges, braking and accelerating, and the results analysed to improve engine response, torque performance and fuel consumption. Also working with Ilmor in Germany is Dasa, the space research company of Daimler-Benz, which tests and experiments with new materials that might be used in racing engine construction. The close interaction between Mercedes and Ilmor includes exchanges of personnel as well as data.
Just as it is with Mercedes, the element of competition is a cornerstone of the Ilmor philosophy. Mario Illien: "Either a person is a racer - has a competitive mind - or they do not. Designing and building racing engines is a challenge to compete and the fact that you get instant feedback at the races keeps you on your toes. You find out immediately if you have done a good or bad job. That helps to motivate everybody."
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