Current McLaren

Arguably one of the big teams in Formula One but lately they don't seem to be able to get the basics right.
Some of their strategy and decisions in the last few years has left more than a few observers scratching their heads.

Just a few for starters:

• Leaving Kimi out on a badly flat-spotted tyre, resulting in it exploding on the last lap.
• Leaving Hamilton out on tyres so badly worn they were down to the canvas; Bridgestone themselves demanded that McLaren bring him in and McLaren refused, keeping him out for a few more laps. That decision arguably cost Hamilton the first rookie WDC and is one which will haunt him and McLaren for the rest of their days.
• Not sending Button and Hamilton out to get banker laps in during Q1.
• Sending Hamilton out on used tyres in Q3, with rain forecast, meaning it would be impossible to set a fast lap time on his second attempt on new tyres.

Their major updates seem to send them further down the grid, instead of challenging for pole positions and wins. As the season progresses they tend to get worse before getting better, by which time it is generally too late.

It's often said of them "write them off at your peril", but is this necessarily true?

The last time they won the WCC was in 1998 and their last WDC was 2008, before that 1999.
Their days of regularly winning championships seem to be well and truly behind them.

It's all well and good coming up with reasons why they haven't won championships.
The fact remains though, they have won just one WDC in the last 12 years.

So where to now for McLaren?

(I wrote this in rather a hurry so I will flesh it out when I have more time.)

 

[Il_leone]

Dieting helps especially when you have more ballast to play on the car to change the balance. Take note Webber is heavier than Vettel so he has less freedom to move the weight around the car.

Gone are the days when you get drivers like James Hunt who would be boozing and smoking at every other given opportunity before he took to an F1 car

 

[racecub]

Yes and I do understand about ballast and being supremely fit. Im not suggesting the McLaren drivers take up boozing and smoking a la James Hunt, just that they take Christmas day off. Lewis is small anyway.

 

[Slyboogy]

They would have easily burned off the calories from the Christmas dinner easily before testing, due to their fierce training programmes

 

[Brogan]

It's just more McLaren nonsense.
Even when I was training twice a day, six days a week I still had the occasional day off.

I doubt many other drivers, if any, had such a festive-free holiday period.

 

[Il_leone]

Mclaren are suppose to be the ultra professional perfectionists of F1 in terms of approach

 

[gethinceri]

I have taken the decision to stop myself worrying about such trivial matters by not believing any of them.

 

[Il_leone]

I remember supposedly Mansell was told to lay off chocolate bars and beer because he was the heaviest driver back in 1991-1992 by Williams.

Don't you think Michael Schumacher would have been done the same then when he showed everyone that being better prepared in terms of fitness helped

 

[The Artist.....]

...somehow I doubt that there's much, or even any, truth in this statement - it's blowing smoke- although I do remember Daley thompson's mantra that since everyone else took christmas day off, then if he trained then he would have one extra training session over his opposition!!!

 

[Brogan]

Apparently McLaren have now bought back all of the shares purchased by Mercedes.

http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/the-politics-within-mclaren/

 

[Road of Bones]

Fascinating Bro - but who will they eventually end up being supplied by, if they are not going to develop their own powerplant, I wonder ?

(footnote - great to see that "the Mole" is back at work too - I'd been wondering what had happened to him & the Penelopes...)

 

[Brogan]

Agreed on the engine supply situation.

I'm surprised (and disappointed) that they haven't started work on their own engine by now.
I though the drastic rule changes (reduced capacity, turbo) would have been the perfect time as everyone will be starting from scratch.

 

[MCLS]

Maybe they are and want to make sure that they've got it perfect before announcing it. Nothing would be worse for them than unveiling an engine that doesn't work properly

 

[FB]

Is Carlo Chiti still alive? Bet he could knock them up an engine in about 10 minutes.

Edit: Just checked his Wiki page and he died in 1994, shame. For those that don't know he was responsible for many of the beautiful Alfa engines of the 70's and 80's and the Subaru flat 12 of the early 90's..

 

[Road of Bones]

A job for the McLaren Applied Technology Centre, methinks? Perhaps they're going to dig out the old TAG specs again...

 

[FB]

Bit of a brain drain at Mclaren according to Joe Saward with lots of engineers Ferrari bound.

The arrival in Maranello of former McLaren man Pat Fry has led to a certain amount of recruitment of McLaren employees for Ferrari, now that Fry has been moved up to the role of technical director. These include a number of aerodynamicists, notably senior aerodynamicist Rupad Darekar, who has worked at McLaren for the last 10 years. He is joined by Greece’s Ioannis Veloudis, Italy’s Giacomo Tortora and Britain’s Lawrence Hodge. In addition to these engineers Fry has also lured away Jonathan Heal, a senior stress engineer at McLaren for the last seven years. A master of aeronautical engineering from Imperial College, London, Heal joined McLaren from Airbus in 2005.

http://joesaward.wordpress.com/

 

[Brogan]

I hope Ferrari have suitable controls in place so they don't use any McLaren IP...

 

[FB]

You can imagine the Mclaren team will be VERY interested in next years "radical" new Ferrari.

 

[RasputinLives]

Apparently they've all been issued with individual home photocopiers.

 

[Galahad]

I suspect that if McLaren was building an F1 engine production facility, we would know about it. Not the sort of thing that can be done in someone's back garden.

Honda was rumoured and seems eminently logical for 2014.

 

[teabagyokel]

I hope Ferrari have suitable controls in place so they don't use any McLaren IP...

They have strict controls. They're the same controls that ensured that Webber's missing front wing from Monza wasn't painted white to flutter on Felipe later in the season...