Racing the Maserati MC12

Maserati Monthly 10 brought you a review of the first full season of competition for the Maserati MC12. The stunning supercar heralded the return of Modena's legendary Trident marque to competition after almost fifty years. After cataloguing dominance of the 2005 FIA GT Championship, it is worth looking at the technology that goes into making a multiple race winner.

Conventional road cars are built from a steel chassis, made from sheets pressed into shape and welded together. The MC12 eschews a chassis; instead, there is a monocoque, or 'tub', hand-built from carbon-fiber. Manufacturing a tub from carbon-fiber is time-consuming and expensive, but it brings two great benefits: strength and lightness.

Behind the cockpit is what propels this mighty beast - an appropriately mighty engine. A light-alloy, 6-liter V12, with two camshafts to each bank of cylinders, the power output depends upon the restrictions imposed on the air intake by the sanctioning bodies of auto sport, but in almost any configuration it will be comfortably greater than 600bhp. Since the whole car weighs under 2,500 lbs, whatever superlatives you care to think of apply to the performance. Yet this stunning engine is coupled to something familiar to most Maserati drivers - a paddle shift transmission with computer controlled clutch.

True, the six-speed sequential gearbox fitted to the MC12 isn't quite the same as the Cambiocorsa or DuoSelect fitted to most road-going Maseratis, but the operation is equally simple. Unlike the road cars, the software has been tuned to optimize one single parameter: the speed of the gearchange. Racing drivers are willing to sacrifice just about everything to make a faster car, and if giving up a smooth gearchange shaves a tenth of a second off a lap, so be it. The final, remarkable fact about the powertrain? That power and fury is transmitted through a clutch less than six inches across.

All this technology is normally invisible, as the car is clad in breathtaking bodywork - carbon fiber, of course, sandwiching nomex. The concept for the design came from renowned stylist Giugiaro, and the design was further refined in the wind-tunnel by Frank Stephenson. The success of all the hard work came when the MC12 hit the track in 2004; second and third in its very first race, and a win in the second race.

The car enjoyed huge success in 2005, its first full season. You might be wondering why such a stunning endurance racer has not been seen in the world's greatest long-distance race, the Le Mans 24 Hours. A few years ago the organizers of the race, the ACO, had regulations which differed from those of the sport's governing body, the FIA. There were discussions on harmonizing their rules, and it seemed likely that cars built to either specification would be accepted, possibly with some restrictions to equalize performance - so Maserati opted to build the MC12 to the FIA regulations as they stood. When the regulations were finally harmonized, Maserati found the MC12 was about two inches too wide. Making the car narrower would have been impossibly costly; the short front suspension arms bolt directly to the carbon monocoque, and shortening the arms on each side by an inch would have seriously compromised the handling, not to mention the necessity of going back to the wind-tunnel to optimize the bodywork.

The FIA, alert to the sequence of events which led to the situation, accepted the MC12 into their GT Championship, handicapping the car with extra weight and a narrower rear wing compared to the other cars in its class. Sadly the ACO have refused to countenance any such compromise, insisting that the only way in which the MC12 would be accepted is to comply with their current regulations.

This puts the ACO somewhat out of step with the rest of the world; in 2005, as well as the FIA GT Championship, the MC12 raced in the American Le Mans Series, and both the Italian GT Championship and the Japanese Super GT Series will see the Maserati supercar competing in 2006.