McLaren MCL33
The McLaren MCL33 is a Formula One racing car designed and constructed by McLaren to compete in the 2018 FIA Formula One World Championship. The car was driven by two-time World Drivers' Champion Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne, with additional testing and development work carried out by reigning European Formula 3 champion Lando Norris and McLaren's regular test driver Oliver Turvey. The MCL33 is the first car built by McLaren to use a customer Renault engine after the team terminated its engine supply deal with Honda after three years and also first McLaren car to utilize a French-licensed engine manufacturer since the Peugeot-powered McLaren MP4/9 in 1994. It made its competitive debut at the 2018 Australian Grand Prix. The car was launched with an orange and blue livery designed as a tribute to some of the team's earliest cars. Currently Fernando Alonso’s MCL33 is on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, CA, USA. After criticising their engine supplier in the previous seasons, a switch to customer Renault engines in 2018 exposed issues with the McLaren chassis. The car could manage just two top 10 qualifying times throughout the season, both by Fernando Alonso, and the team's drivers were eliminated 21 times in the first qualifying session. McLaren had the second worst average qualifying ranking of any team in 2018, only ahead of Williams. Reliability however was improved from the previous year, and the team greatly benefitted from their rivals' problems to score points from the early races. The team finished sixth in the constructors' championship after Force India's points from the first 12 races were excluded. Alonso retired from Formula One at the end of the season, while Vandoorne couldn't match his own points tally from 2017 and left the sport. Design and development Engine supply In September 2017, McLaren terminated their full-works partnership with Honda, citing Honda's repeated failure to supply a reliable and competitive power unit as being behind the decision to end the partnership. During negotiations to secure a new supplier, Renault disclosed that they did not have the capacity to supply McLaren whilst meeting their commitments to customer teams Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Toro Rosso. As part of the agreement between Renault and McLaren, Toro Rosso ended their customer relationship with Renault and instead acquired full-works Honda engines, freeing up the existing Renault supply chain for McLaren and allowing Renault to supply the team with their customer 2018-specification engine, the Renault R.E.18 with free engine status. Engine development Renault made the first major updates to the R.E.18 power unit at the Canadian Grand Prix. A second upgrade, including a new MGU-K, was made available for the Austrian Grand Prix after lengthy delays; the parts had originally been scheduled for introduction in , however, the new unit could not be easily fitted to all customer teams as the upgrade would require bodywork changes. The update introduced in Austria also included a bespoke qualifying mode Renault claimed was focused at maximising performance over a