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.)

 

[Viscount]

Presumably he considers those two incidents mutually exclusive and crashing out is far worse than a slow pitstop.

 

[Brogan]

They are directly related, not mutually exclusive.
The 10+ seconds lost in the pits put Hamilton in that position on the circuit - two places back from where he should have been.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

I agree with both of you because I don't think Martin is about to take responsibility for another McLaren screw-up. did you hear in the commentary that the jacks have failed a lot in testing but that this was the first time that they had failed on the race weekend. Sounds like they gambled 12 seconds against 2 or 3 tenths. Not clever! Palm => face!

 

[Brogan]

That's a fairly shocking admission - they knew there was a high failure rate but decided to use them anyway?

That makes no sense at all and whoever made that decision should be moved sideways as a precursor to being moved out.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

It was Ted that mentioned it in his pit-lane piece after the race. Don't expect word directly from McLaren on the matter. The embarrassment of the situation may explain why that McLaren and Whitmarsh are trying to sweep it under the carpet.

 

[The Artist.....]

I think this pit stop blunder bears similarities to Massa in singapore 2008... High pressure pit stop, and something goes wrong with (new) equipment... Again, hindsight is fantastic, but imagine if you knew that mclaren had a faster jack system, and hamilton was marginally overtaken by alonso... It's a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't!

 

[ExtremeNinja]

That's like serving food in a cooking competition because it tastes very nice, knowing that you may poison the judges.

 

[Senna's_right_foot]

That's a fairly shocking admission - they knew there was a high failure rate but decided to use them anyway?

That makes no sense at all and whoever made that decision should be moved sideways as a precursor to being moved out.

"As team principal you aren’t exclusively responsible for everything, for success or failure, but you are where the buck stops."

Taken from an interview with Ron Dennis - http://www.babusinesslife.com/Tools/Features/Ron-Dennis-.html

 

[downforce]

McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh believes Lewis Hamilton should have been more cautious in handling his battle with Pastor Maldonado in the closing stages of the European Grand Prix.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/100724

McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton probably believes McLaren should have been more cautious in handling his pit stop.

 

[Josh]

Wow, sorry but what a dumb and terrible headline by autosport.

Before everyone starts slagging him off again, here is what he said:

In my mind, you saw him defend with [Romain] Grosjean and with [Kimi] Raikkonen, and he didn't do anything different with Maldonado. It was a different outcome, but he didn't do anything different with those drivers.

"My own view is that it was Maldonado's fault, and it is deeply frustrating – but he is a racing driver and that is it. I am sure in hindsight you have to say that dealing with someone like that you have to take a different approach, but you cannot anticipate it."

Emphasis mine for obvious reasons. This is just autosport using a controversial headline. Nowhere does Whitmarsh blame Hamilton as is implied by autosport and downforce.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

Good save, Josh

"When dealing with someone like that". I wonder what he wanted to say.

 

[Viscount]

Brogan The lost time in the pits didn't put Hamilton in that position in my opinion, if anything was the catalyst it was the safety car deployment. The safety car forced McLaren to pit Hamilton early in his 2nd stint leaving a long final stint meaning he'd be vulnerable at the end with heavily worn tyres. The safety car bunched up the field so the 11 seconds lost didn't matter that much, he did lose 2 positions but was quickly able to pass Raikkonen when the safety car came in regaining 1 of them. Grosjean's retirement put Hamilton a few seconds behind Alonso but Hamilton didn't have the pace to get any closer to him, which suggests to me that even if Hamilton hadn't been jumped by Alonso in the pits, Alonso would've likely had the pace to overtake Hamilton before the end of the race putting Hamilton in exactly the same position he ended up in.

 

[F1ang-o]

Let's hope someone 'like that' is dealt with..........

 

[Brogan]

Viscount, without those two places lost, Hamilton definitely would not have been at that part of the circuit at that particular time.

I don't doubt that Alonso and probably Maldonado would have passed him before the end of the race.

 

[Viscount]

Well I can't disagree with that.

On a side note, it was pretty bad timing after Sam Michael was bragging about the McLaren pitstops that they had another problem.

 

[Brogan]

Indeed.

I wonder whether McLaren are prepared to risk continue using the new jacks, bearing in mind the risk vs potential reward.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

I would hope they do as there is obviously a gain to be had. I would put them through some serious QA (quality assurance), though before they redeploy them to thier live pit-team on competitive sessions of a race weekend.

 

[cider_and_toast]

Once again it would seem that Mclaren's pit crew have been training alongside members of Billy Smart's Circus, It wouldn't surprise me at Silverstone to see Hamilton or Button pull into their pit box, a puff of smoke appear from the rear of the car, all the wheels fall off and Martin Whitmarsh dash out of the pits wearing big shoes, a spinning bow tie and big yellow hat to throw a bucket of confetti over the car.

Not good enough (again)

No wonder Hamilton hasn't rushed to put pen to paper.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

To be fair to the crew, they did nothing wrong. In fact, they were pretty bloody good. The fault is with the guy who decided that the new jack was ready to see action despite proving temperamental in tests leading up to the event. A piece of equipment such as this should be foolproof.

 

[teabagyokel]

Whitmarsh said the front jack failure was "not the biggest crisis of our day".

Oh really?

Wasn't the biggest crisis of their day Button's lack of pace?