McLaren today celebrates its 50 years of existence as today marks the day that New Zealander Bruce McLaren inaugurated Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd on September 2, 1963.
This forum contains threads to discuss teams themselves. Anything not technical about the cars, including restructuring, performances etc belongs here.
Robbobnob wrote:Its not the sponsorship thats the problem, its the technical structure they have at Mclaren which is their Achilles heel.
With a different technical lead on alternating cars, there can be no real continuity in terms of development from one year to another, especially when there is such stability in the rules. Each technical lead will have their own philosophy on how to manipulate the air around the car to generate performance and subsequently developments such as the front wing and break ducts will have a significant effect on how that is done, these are improved by a process of iteration, continuously tweaking the topology of the wings surfaces to direct the flow around the side-pod and into the coke bottle.
As soon as the technical lead changes and the philosophy on how to utilise the coke bottle and exhaust blown diffuser changes, all the fine iteration work which was done on the front of the previous car is lost and the performance of the car takes a huge hit.
Teams with a stable technical structure, like Red Bull for example, have a lead engineer that decides whether a philosophy will work on the car or not, and has the ability to carry through developments to the next years car and even improving them.
That being said in times of wholesale changes to the techical Regulations, sometimes it is beneficial to have two technical teams, but that hasnt been the case for the last two years.
AFAIK They haven't alternated since '07 , when the FIA suspended Coughlin because Mclaren were caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
“To be able to actually make something is awfully nice”
Bruce McLaren on building his first McLaren racecars, 1970
“I've got to be careful what I say, but possibly to probably Juan would have had a bigger go”
Sir Frank Williams after the 2003 Canadian GP, where Ralf hesitated to pass brother M. Schumacher
AMuS is saying that the deadline for McLaren resigning with Mercedes is gone, and they are definitely going with Honda. They also make the assumption that their Honda deal is similar to the Merc one, meaning they'll get their engines for free.
macca is not getting better but getting even worst than before. Look like there is no update at all. other teams moving forward but macca is just static.
Pup wrote:AMuS is saying that the deadline for McLaren resigning with Mercedes is gone, and they are definitely going with Honda. They also make the assumption that their Honda deal is similar to the Merc one, meaning they'll get their engines for free.
I think you've hit upon McL's problem: they have lost several good technical people, and have not been able to bring in equally good people (or those new people are not yet fully integrated into the team). No wonder they tried so hard to get Allison from Lotus (who apparently will go back to Ferrari).
Enzo Ferrari was a great man. But he was not a good man. -- Phil Hill
I think Macca are done as a top team for the next few years.
All the talent is at Mercedes, Ferrari or Red Bull and they are poaching more people too, who is Macca bringing in?
There is nobody leading this team it seems, I've been saying that for a while now but what is their direction, who is making the big decisions.
Having a strategy is one thing, but you need someone to drive that, to move and shake in the background to get things done. Is that happening at Mclaren? I don't think Whitemarsh is up for the job at times, I think Jenson would rather moan, I think Perez is the only person with fire in his belly.
We were told to expect big things from this car, and that has proven utterly incorrect, who is taking the blame for that mistake? What are they doing about it? Why aren't they learning from their mistake? - this happened in 2010 to 2011 season, only now they don't have Paddy Lowe to set them back on course.
When a car goes from being the fastest in one race, to being 6th fastest at the next, serious questions need to be asked. Are those questions being asked at Macca, has anyone sat down and made the hard decisions?
I'm a nobody, but even I can see something is wrong.
Last edited by JimClarkFan on 11 May 2013, 21:45, edited 1 time in total.
JimClarkFan wrote:I think Macca are done as a top team for the next few years.
All the talent is at Mercedes, Ferrari or Red Bull and they are poaching more people too, who is Macca bringing in?
There is nobody leading this team it seems, I've been saying that for a while now but what is their direction, who is making the big decisions.
Having a strategy is one thing, but you need someone to drive that, to move and shake in the background to get things done. Is that happening at Mclaren. I don't think Whitemarsh is up for the job at times, I think Jenson would rather moan, I think Perez is the only person with fire in his belly.
We were told to expect big things from this car, and that has proven utterly incorrect, who is taking the blame for that mistake? What are they doing about it? Why aren't they learning from their mistake? - this happened in 2010 to 2012, only now they don't have Paddy Lowe to set them back on course.
When a car goes from being the fastest in one race, to being 6th fastest at the next, serious questions need to be asked. Are those questions being asked at Macca, has anyone sat down and made the hard decisions?
I'm a nobody, but even I can see something is wrong.
Listening to FP3 and the glowing reviews of a mechanic at Merc about what Lewis is bringing to the team is hardly surprising McLaren are at sea. Clearly he was dragging performances out of a succession of McLaren dogs and now he's not there to get a respectable grid slot.
You can bet that the McLaren garage floor is clean enough for RD to eat his dinner off but don't expect a WDC challenging car. Someone should remind the team they exist to win not just take part.
The only thing worse than this season for a McLaren fan would be to see Lewis still there dragging round a hopeless lemon. At least he's spared from that.
IMHO, I would always judge the performance of a Button driven McLaren by adding at least a few places to his current standings.
If he was the only driver in a McLaren last year, we would have all been scratching our heads and wondering where the pace went after two or three races, as well as endless stories about being totally lost at sea about how to set the car up.
So what's next?
Updates haven't closed the gap and the number 1 driver is languishing in 14th.
This all seems surreal for Mclaren to be doing so consistently bad. At least in 2009 the car had good low speed handling and they had a driver that could fight up through the places.
ringo wrote:So what's next?
Updates haven't closed the gap and the number 1 driver is languishing in 14th.
This all seems surreal for Mclaren to be doing so consistently bad. At least in 2009 the car had good low speed handling and they had a driver that could fight up through the places.
Atleast the car is same pace during 1 lap as last years car in this qual, since Perez matched Hamiltons poletime, so bascially they have last years car again
NoDivergence wrote:Wrong, since this years tires are faster. So you have to still compare to the front runners. Very very far behind
You dont think i know that ? But also saying they havent gotten anywhere is wrong cause everyone moves forward in F1, no one ever says they move backwards, so most of the time you cant even see if a car gets better cause its almost always the same cars up there year after year, and they get better thru the year but they are still up there maintaining pretty much the same gap.
If Mclaren started winning then i we could atleast see the step forward, atm we cant see anyones step forward.
what´s wrong with butons driving? you guys forget he outscored master Hamilton 672 /657 over 3 years and over these seasons he kept Hamilton who is considered one of the top three drivers in check .
Now come up with luck or circumstances and I´m sure both of them had similar strokes of bad luck and issues ...the current form of Mclaren has nothing to do with button and Hamsy would not score any better over a season.Button has done enough to prove his worth.
