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.)

 

[The Artist.....]

And he feels its the fault of the McLaren car. He says its the worst Mclaren he's driven.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/nov/05/jenson-button-mclaren-worst-car

Wow, another case of a journalist trying to make a story that isn't there!

This car hasn't suited me as well as McLaren's last two. Since I've been here this has been the worst year. It's been tricky, even on good weekends. We've had a problem pretty much every weekend, lately. We need to stop it. I don't get it.

So, he's saying that the combination of driver and car haven't gelled well this year, and he's had his worst year at McLaren.

"The car is quite unusual in the way that it works. It works really well for Lewis, and works really well for me at times. But the consistency isn't there."

 

[Brogan]

It's possible the changes to the tyre compounds have affected Button more than others; I believe they are on average about 25% harder which is more or less 1 compound type.

Judging by his claim that this year's McLaren is the worst he's driven, he's obviously not getting on well with it.

 

[Incubus]

Strange... Hamilton was quoted in Autosport yesterday saying the McLaren was a dominant car in Abu Dhabi and that a trouble-free week-end would have seen the team grab a one-two..

 

[RickD]

teabagyokel - The interesting thing in that chart is that taking out Jensons set-up issues races (BH to CN). Races where they have both finished, they are 4-4.

Just thought that was an interesting stat..

 

[The Pits]

And if you only look at Australia, it is a 100% win record for JB.......

 

[pirateplunder]

pirateplunder........I'd love you to explain your reasoning and provide some facts to support your beliefs.

Unfortunately I doubt my answer will suffice - but the answer to both points is the same.

Lewis Hamilton is (undoubtedly) more talented than Jenson Button.
Lewis Hamilton is not, and never has been particularly well liked (as a person, not a driver) within the team (at the crew/designers/engineers level). He's not somebody who is naturally easy to get along with - unlike Button and Alonso.

Not facts, but first hand discussion with a member of the team throughout the time Lewis has been there - its the best I can do, and to be honest, good enough for me.

 

[sushifiesta]

Interesting that Button is blaming the cars not the tyres, it doesn't help the view that he can only produce results when everything is to his liking. Recently the gap between Lewis and Jenson has been bigger than the gap between Alonso and Massa, which is saying something. Will McLaren need to completely redesign the car for next year to have something that Jenson and Perez (who would appear to have a similar style in the sense of being kind to the tyres) can drive?

If you suppose that McLaren's year next year will look like this year but with two Jenson's in the cars instead of Lewis and Jenson, then they may be in for a bit of a slump and that's going to raise a lot of questions about why they didn't ensure that Lewis stayed. Lewis needs to make sure he beats Rosberg next year to maintain his reputation, but McLaren need to make sure they maintain a similar level of performance without Lewis, and I think that may be a much more difficult task.

 

[Viscount]

teabagyokel - The interesting thing in that chart is that taking out Jensons set-up issues races (BH to CN). Races where they have both finished, they are 4-4.

Just thought that was an interesting stat..

Pretty selective excluding the races where he had setup issues, when his teammate was still qualifying on the front row and winning.

 

[RickD]

Viscount - Not really, I am talking about weekends without issues for either driver.

 

[sushifiesta]

RickD which weekends are those exactly?

 

[RickD]

Sorry, I thought i'd be as selective as everyone else, isn't that allowed?

Those would be excluding the weekends I stated in my original post on this.

 

[sushifiesta]

It was a genuine question, I was wondering which races you'd decided both Jenson and Lewis had a clean weekend? By my reckoning Hamilton alone has only had 7 or so problem free weekends!

 

[RickD]

sushifiesta - I am going by the chart teabagyokel posted and taking out the races Jenson had setup issue and those one or the other of them didn't finish. Some of those Lewis had issue in, he still beat Jenson, so was pretty pointless taking those out.

 

[Viscount]

RickD You're perfectly entitled to be as selective as you wish. I just personally didn't find it a very valid comparison, though I realise we're not all suppose to agree on everything.

 

[racecub]

"Set up issues" aren't really the same as having your car break. A driver has some responsibility to set his car up. If both drivers found the car undrivable, then maybe it could be said that the car is particularly difficult to setup, but when one car is getting podiums that reasoning doesn't hold. It wasn't even a period of a week or two, it was almost a third of the season. bout the same amoint of races as Lewis had a healthy car and trouble free GP

 

[sushifiesta]

If you look simply at the races where both Hamilton and Button were classified then it is 7-4 in Hamilton's favour. I haven't looked at Button's year in similar detail but at the 4 races Button was ahead (Australia, China, Valencia, Japan) Hamilton had a gearbox change in China, Maldonado crashing in to him at Valencia and suspension issues in Japan (although it's debatable at what point in the weekend this started to affect him and you can argue that Button would have been ahead anyway).

Australia is the only race where you can clearly say that Hamilton had no issues (apart from a slightly slow start) and Button beat him. The only other races of the season where I think you can argue that Button would have beat Hamilton if neither of them had issues are Spa and Suzuka. By that measure I make it 15-3 to Hamilton.

I think it's very difficult to make the stats be in Jenson's favour this year however you look at it. I think you tried very hard RickD and still the outcome was a draw!

But this is turning in to the Lewis vs. Jenson thread...

 

[Jen]

I don't remember much, but I do remember that when Kimi drove for McLaren he was called 'the car breaker', or something similar, by both the garage and the designers!

Just thought I would throw that in the mix.

 

[racecub]

It's already in the mix, in the Jenson V Button thread. I've not heard Hamilton called a car breaker. In fact it's only this year that such misfortune has befallen him so catastrophically, I believe it was two and a half years after he joined McLaren in F1 until he had his first failure. So implying the fault is with Hamiltons driving I think is incorrect. Though it is indeed a mystery why McLaren have become so unreliable in so many different areas of the car. Over 100 points estimated by James Allen lost due to errors and unreliability for one driver alone. That's disgraceful.

 

[Kewee]

Hardly surprising considering he attempted to blackmail them, after secretly using stolen Ferrari data for himself, and ultimately cost them $100 million and the loss of the WCC.

Also, do you have any proof of this claim, other than what you've read in the NZ press?
If you're going to ask others to provide proof for their beliefs then you shouldn't be surprised for the same to be asked of you.

There were a couple of reasons for my posting but in reply to your response. I felt the phrase "immensely more talented" was a huge exaggeration and I didn't ask for proof as you put it, I just asked pirateplunder for an explanation for his beliefs as I was interested.
Regarding my comment on Alonso being detested. Most of our opinions are just that, nothing more. In this case my opinion was based on comments in the British press. One that I remember very well was, "look at the prick sitting over there, if I had a gun I'd f.....g shoot him". Reports in the British press constantly cast an image of Alonso being a solitary figure in the McLaren garage. As I said it was widely reported in every British publication at the time and if reports are to be believed both parties couldn't wait for the season to end so they could part ways.

 

[Jen]

racecub, you may be right, but I don't like to 'cross thread', so will check later.

The interesting thing was that you instantly assumed I was having a go at Lewis!