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.)

 

[Hamberg]

How can you say he hasn't changed the results and sponsorship Mephistopheles?!

It's no easy task taking a world championship team with two former world champions, to the back of the grid with no title sponsorship! You expect far too much.

 

[Il_leone]

Hamberg

Ron Dennis basically forced out Whitmarsh through a coup whilst one of the shareholders was apparently on sick leave - Mansoor Oojeh who he has fallen out with.

He managed to convince the other backers that he is the best man to lead Mclaren back to the glory years. So far he's managed to take them to the back of the grid in less than 3 months

The problem appears to be Ron trying to apply" Game Theory" where Mclaren needed to do something innovative to beat Mercedes and talks about zero base philosophy

So far the results speaks for themselves the car can't last a full race at full power.

You have to wonder what Mclaren and Honda have been doing the past 12 months to end up in this position

 

[Mephistopheles]

Well I just miss Whitmarsh giving Jens a nice big sloppy kiss...

 

[Titch]

I'm quite happy to miss that Mephistopheles . Now Whitmarsh giving Ron a big sloppy kiss would be something.

 

[Viscount]

Il_leone
The FIA announced the new engine regulations in 2011 to come in for the 2013 season, but the team's and engine manufacturers pushed that 2 years wasn't enough time to develop the engine and the FIA decided to push the regulations back another year.

So it's unsurprising where Honda currently are with their engine, given they only had a year to develop it whereas the other manufacturers are almost 3 years ahead of them in development.

Ron made a fair point a few weeks ago that no-one's realistically going to beat the Mercedes works team with a customer Mercedes engine given the closer design relationship they have between the chassis side and engine side. It will be quite some time before we can really evaluate whether Ron's the right man to lead McLaren back to the front once Honda's up to speed.

 

[siffert_fan]

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/formula-one-set-to-increase-engine-allocation

Can it truly be? It actually appears that, for once, common sense just may prevail in F1.

 

[Bill Boddy]

Is it a coincidence that this has been agreed following Mercedes and Red Bull having lost at least one unit each?

 

[F1Yorkshire]

Seems to be aimed at giving fans who come on a Friday something to watch, limited engine running would mean no cars would come out on a Friday. This extra engine could only be used on a Friday.

As it looks, McLaren will be taking an extra engine and therefore grid penalties. Is there anything in the rules that stops them taking the extra engine now and getting the penalties done now while the car is slow and not at the end of the season when they should have hopefully improved.

 

[Mephistopheles]

I think they have to use up their allocation first but I reckon neither McLaren or Honda give a shit about how many engines they get through..

 

[Road of Bones]

Really Mephistopheles ? Why are Honda running detuned at the moment then?

 

[Mephistopheles]

To try and find out what the problem is and anyway rumour has it that they are going to go a bit more aggressive as running detuned engines hasn't helped, the first rule of engineering is test it till it breaks then find out what broke and make that bit stronger and iterate..

 

[FB]

You have to admire Jenson's attempt to big up the positives.

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/button-hails-mclaren-s-progress

 

[Mephistopheles]

Well at least he out qualified his teammate by a 10th, does this mean that Jenson brings 7 tenths to the team?

 

[The Artist.....]

It seems that the biggest problem McLaren has is that its energy recovery system doesn't work! At all...

 

[The Artist.....]

Well at least he out qualified his teammate by a 10th, does this mean that Jenson brings 7 tenths to the team?

Well, considering that Ron Dennis thought it worth dropping Button for Alonso, this demonstrates his complete lack of judgement!

 

[Kewee]

Yes The Artist..... of course it does. The fact that this is Alonso's first race weekend in the car and the fact that rain turns qualifying into a bit of a lottery doesn't come into it does it.

 

[cider_and_toast]

It's a fair point that this is Alonso's first time in the car for a month but the rain had nothing to do with it. All of McLaren's laps were run in dry conditions.

 

[The Artist.....]

And it wasn't Alonso's first run for a month; after all, he had run a large number of laps in FP1, 2 and 3!

After Alonso humiliated Raikkonen last year, many were expecting more of the same with Button... Odd that as with Hamilton, that just didn't happen!

 

[Kewee]

The point that maybe no one considers is that McLaren know they have no chance during the race and have stated they are treating these early races as test sessions. It's highly likely they will be testing different aspects of development on each car which will yield very different results for each car/driver combination. Hardly the ideal time to start comparing drivers.

 

[rufus_mcdufus]

It seems that the biggest problem McLaren has is that its energy recovery system doesn't work! At all...

Well they're so slow that there's no energy to recover...