“There is no doubt that Enkei is an extremely knowledgeable and competent company on all aspects of wheel design and manufacturing,” says senior McLaren design team member, Luca Furbatto. “Enkei's desire to perfect their products over the years, enhancing performance and quality at every opportunity, is aligned with McLaren's vision and values.”

That partnership starts on paper at Enkei’s base in Japan. After McLaren have specified design targets, including maximum weight, hub design, stiffness and installation requirements, a team at Enkei get to work, creating a number of ideas before showing McLaren its final proposals, typically numbering around 20.

To ensure optimum reliability, McLaren regularly carry out non-destructive tests on the wheels. But even with all this effort, it’s hard to guard against the unexpected and so wheel failures can - and do - happen. For McLaren, the most recent came at the 2008 Spanish Grand Prix, when driver Heikki Kovalainen suffered a high-speed crash linked to a manufacturing fault on his car’s left-front wheel.

“That accident was caused by a set of unfortunate circumstances - an undetectable finish had been incorrectly applied to the surface of the wheel, causing the wheel to suffer a loss of preload at racing speeds,” explains Terada. “As a result, the wheel loosened and started rubbing against the brake duct, which led to the sudden loss of tyre pressure and Heikki’s accident. It wasn’t easy to recreate that exact set of circumstances in the laboratory, but once we understood all the issues, we were able to further tighten our inspection procedure.”