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.)

 

[Jen]

Mr Whitmarsh, thankfully, has a tad more decorum.

I don't think he is ineffective - he has a totally different style than our Ron and it is taking an age for the garage to understand that. If the garage caught up and realised that he is a lot gentler but just as demanding then their results would be better.

In public Martin is a lot less confrontational than Ron, but who can guess whether it is the same elsewhere. I think he leads by cajoling, sympathy and a hands-on approach that was lacking before.

The difference between MW and RD is very striking but MW has never had free rein to implement his own ideas and methods which has confused all concerned.

 

[sushifiesta]

Not that I want to buy it or anything, but what magazine was crazy enough to publish that?

 

[Jen]

F1 Fanatic, from twitpic.

 

[racecub]

Jen that's the one Jen! HA HA! I knew I'd seen it somewhere. It's hard to take him serious when you've seen that picture!

F1Yorkshire...I think 'cock it up' is quite a good caption!

 

[Brogan]

McLaren's run of consecutive points finishes comes to an end at the 2013 Canadian GP with Pérez and Button finishing 11th and 12th respectively.

 

[The Pits]

They were abject today, neither driver really looked like they were ever going to be able to make an impact. Even worse, it looks like they have gone backwards. If they are investing significant resource at the expense of next year, they are making a serious mistake, and throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

And this from someone who defended the decision to go radical on the car.

 

[FB]

They really are a bag of crap at the moment aren't they, and getting worse. I wonder if Honda may be having second thoughts?

 

[Johnny Carwash]

6th in the constructors championship at the moment says it all really.

 

[Il_leone]

yesterday was unacceptable what happened with Button in Q2. so slack and unprofessional.

I knew Sam Michael was a bad choice to join the technical team

 

[Brogan]

Wasn't it the case that Button just backed off too much and missed out by a fraction?
I don't think the team can be blamed in that particular instance,

 

[Il_leone]

Brogan

They were not in a hurry to get him and he should have been at the front of the queue not at the back trying to clear space

The team should have been telling him to speed up

 

[Brogan]

The team should have been telling him to speed up

He's not Massa.

He knew how tight it was so should have kept up with the pack - he left too big a gap to the car in front.

 

[Mephistopheles]

I would say that at the moment McLaren are less than mediocre.

 

[sushifiesta]

It's a communication issue from both sides, either the pit wall should have been telling Jenson or Jenson should have been asking the pit wall how much time he had to spare once he got in to the final sector. You can argue that if he crossed the line in time he wouldn't have been any better off because he would have been too close to the car in front though. In that case the issue was not leaving the pits early enough to be near the front of the queue, which is probably more the team's fault.

At the end of the day it doesn't matter because McLaren just don't have any pace.

 

[The Artist.....]

JB is sounding pretty pissed after the race

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/108000

 

[FB]

About time!

 

[Il_leone]

No point in pretending FB

The fact they said they were supposedly making steady improvements appeared to be BS once again. They appear in a serious mess

Not sure what Mclaren were trying to do with that 1 stop strategy because it worked with Force India's Di Resta and it did not work for Raikkonen's at Lotus

At this rate the team won't finish in the top 4 - Force India will beat them as well at this rate

 

[Soumya Banerjee]

It actually worked quite well for Kimi...given his problems with the brake pedal, i think that he and Lotus did play to their strengths in managing to get into the top 10 yesterday. I doubt whether the car had the pace to challenge for the higher positions...

 

[Porceliamone]

Definitely time to forget 2013. Concentrate on 2014 now please for goodness sake.

 

[KekeTheKing]

The thing about concentrating on next year's car is that if your not concentrating on the right things, then it's all for naught anyway. And in McLaren's case, they seemingly always have "windtunnel correlation" issues. They'll fight on in 2013.