2018 McLaren F1 Team - Renault

[Postmoe]

Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull all spend far more than McLaren does or did even when they had Honda funding. Mclaren’s income now is on a par with Williams although the shortfall should be covered by the owners for a season or two.

F1 isn’t fair or cyclical, ultimately it’s about funding and using it wisely. It is no coincidence at all that when McLaren had a top two budget it was challenging for championships and that stopped when their budget declined around 2010 ish. Nor is it a coincidence that the chassis improved markedly once Honda money flowed in after 2014.

Nor is it a coincidence that Mercedes went from midfield to untouchable at the top following a huge cash injection that resulted in their budget rivalling Ferrari after 2012-3.

If McLaren are to challenge for championships again they need two things, one is the kind of sponsorship deal that simply hasn’t been seen in F1 since the credit crunch and the other is a top engine. They have neither at the moment. Getting the top engine is far easier than getting the budget for a championship challenger, after all it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Renault finally catch up with the others.

As SFW said F1 is a business that turns into a sport every other Sunday afternoon. Always follow the money.

There are many reasons why McLaren failed after Mercedes announced they would be leaving them. Mercedes had been working on their engine for years and wasn't even miles ahead of a customer team like Williams. Ferrari only get their act together last year and Red Bull is also not spending that much more. You can't expect McLaren to sign new sponsors when you are fighting with Saubers.

Well they really need to show what they can do this year then, because as has been said they only have 2 years of corporate backing .
If they really don't look the goods this year as far as top five and fighting for podiums there's going to be a lot of headshaking I'd imagine.

I hope they do well, but it will be a huge shame if they ditched Honda a year too early.

Or a couple of years too late

[RonDennis]

There are many reasons why McLaren failed after Mercedes announced they would be leaving them. Mercedes had been working on their engine for years and wasn't even miles ahead of a customer team like Williams. Ferrari only get their act together last year and Red Bull is also not spending that much more. You can't expect McLaren to sign new sponsors when you are fighting with Saubers.

Well they really need to show what they can do this year then, because as has been said they only have 2 years of corporate backing .
If they really don't look the goods this year as far as top five and fighting for podiums there's going to be a lot of headshaking I'd imagine.

I hope they do well, but it will be a huge shame if they ditched Honda a year too early.

Or a couple of years too late

Correct. I'm already reading stories about Honda not aiming for performance, but reliability. The performance should come in the second half of the season, some things will just never change.

[Talisman]

There are many reasons why McLaren failed after Mercedes announced they would be leaving them. Mercedes had been working on their engine for years and wasn't even miles ahead of a customer team like Williams. Ferrari only get their act together last year and Red Bull is also not spending that much more. You can't expect McLaren to sign new sponsors when you are fighting with Saubers.

How do you think Mercedes worked on their engine years before anyone else? Do you think the massive increase in budget just when the new engine regulations had been decided had anything to do with it? Do you think its a coincidence that Renault which was on a far lower budget than both Ferrari and Mercedes turned up in 2014 with by far the worst engine?

You're right that McLaren will find it extremely difficult to sign new sponsors let alone lucrative ones but the lack of performance over the last few years is only one cause. Another is that sponsors find F1 itself far less productive in terms of publicity, no doubt largely due to the switch to pay-per-view (although that has resulted in a boost in prize money across the board). Even longstanding sponsors like Hugo Boss are now leaving the sport entirely. Force India and Williams have been threatening the top 3 intermittently over the past 3-4 seasons but yet cannot use that success to get more sponsorship. I think its naive to believe that a jump up to 4th will automatically result in a bulging sponsorship portfolio.

Re: relative budgets its worth reading Dieter Rencken's article on autosport regarding team budgets for 2017. It makes sobering reading, not just for McLaren. In fact that McLaren is in major financial difficulty albeit being bailed out for the moment by its owners says a lot about the current state of F1.

[GoranF1]

does anyone have a link to download the documetary of Mclaren from Amazon?

[proteus]

One hell of a cycle only been constructor champ once since 1991 and only 1 drivers championship since 99

By this are you saying that Ferrari are no longer a prime team? one championship in the past 10 years?

Ferrari had is run in the 00's with all of the FIA help a team can get, then it was to Redbull to take the flag and now Mercedes, and I beleive Mclaren's turn will come again, they have all of the tools in place to do so.

While its true that Mclaren has 1 constructors and 3 drivers championships in the past 20 years, it was always (-last 4 seasons) been a regular front runner and a title condenser till the last race so its really a no brainier.

Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull all spend far more than McLaren does or did even when they had Honda funding. Mclaren’s income now is on a par with Williams although the shortfall should be covered by the owners for a season or two.

F1 isn’t fair or cyclical, ultimately it’s about funding and using it wisely. It is no coincidence at all that when McLaren had a top two budget it was challenging for championships and that stopped when their budget declined around 2010 ish. Nor is it a coincidence that the chassis improved markedly once Honda money flowed in after 2014.

Nor is it a coincidence that Mercedes went from midfield to untouchable at the top following a huge cash injection that resulted in their budget rivalling Ferrari after 2012-3.

If McLaren are to challenge for championships again they need two things, one is the kind of sponsorship deal that simply hasn’t been seen in F1 since the credit crunch and the other is a top engine. They have neither at the moment. Getting the top engine is far easier than getting the budget for a championship challenger, after all it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Renault finally catch up with the others.

As SFW said F1 is a business that turns into a sport every other Sunday afternoon. Always follow the money.

Toyota was a team that had one of the biggest budgets and investements when they came to the sport and jet they were never serious contenders for winning the championships. Ferrari has the biggest budget of all teams in the last few years and most they were able to achieve was second.

Its not all about the money. Money definetly helps, but its useless if u use it for the wrong purposes.

[marmer]

McLaren in recent years must get the worst return for every £ they put in compared to anyone else in the sport in terms of results.

[Talisman]

Toyota was a team that had one of the biggest budgets and investements when they came to the sport and jet they were never serious contenders for winning the championships. Ferrari has the biggest budget of all teams in the last few years and most they were able to achieve was second.

Its not all about the money. Money definetly helps, but its useless if u use it for the wrong purposes.

I agree, teams can misspend money or use it inefficiently. I don't believe McLaren comes under that category (neither do RBR or Mercedes mind, still undecided about Ferrari), I was very impressed by the way Honda's cash injection translated quickly into a more competitive chassis. However in a year or two if the income doesn't hit Honda-era levels people will be laid off and that will have a direct impact on chassis development.

Conversely its extremely rare for a team to compete and win with a markedly smaller budget. The only examples I can think of are Brawn which raced with probably the single most expensive car in terms of development costs in history but couldn't develop it through the season and scraped the championship, or FI and Williams in the hybrid era which made the most of the advantage customer Merc engines held over even works Renaults and Ferraris.

Incidentally Toyota's budget wasn't as big as people claim it was except for the first few years including before they entered. They spent a lot of money building up infrastructure then once the factory was as they liked it they cut the budget down to upper midfield level. I think by the time they pulled out the team was starting to show a performance proportional to the budget.

Ferrari has always had issues translating its huge budget into wins but they are very rarely out of championship contention, almost never out of the top 3.

McLaren's budget with Honda put them in a hole behind the top 3 but ahead of almost everyone else. Renault now roughly spend the same as McLaren so it will be interesting to see how the two compare. But it would be foolish to ignore what would happen if McLaren fails to obtain 70-80 million per year by the time the investors decide to stop plugging the funding hole.

[GhostF1]

does anyone have a link to download the documetary of Mclaren from Amazon?

Currently in the middle of episode 3. It's a great insight behind the scenes. They cut it so close with having parts ready, specifically the floor. They also don't paint a very good picture of Honda at all. Lots of "Honda had 10 engines fail in 2015 & 2016" overlays and speaking to the Japanese engineers like children. There's definitely a massive void between the two, very obvious just from the body language between them even.
Looks like Episode 4 is the Barcelona testing.

[RonDennis]

Toyota was a team that had one of the biggest budgets and investements when they came to the sport and jet they were never serious contenders for winning the championships. Ferrari has the biggest budget of all teams in the last few years and most they were able to achieve was second.

Its not all about the money. Money definetly helps, but its useless if u use it for the wrong purposes.

I agree, teams can misspend money or use it inefficiently. I don't believe McLaren comes under that category (neither do RBR or Mercedes mind, still undecided about Ferrari), I was very impressed by the way Honda's cash injection translated quickly into a more competitive chassis. However in a year or two if the income doesn't hit Honda-era levels people will be laid off and that will have a direct impact on chassis development.

Conversely its extremely rare for a team to compete and win with a markedly smaller budget. The only examples I can think of are Brawn which raced with probably the single most expensive car in terms of development costs in history but couldn't develop it through the season and scraped the championship, or FI and Williams in the hybrid era which made the most of the advantage customer Merc engines held over even works Renaults and Ferraris.

Incidentally Toyota's budget wasn't as big as people claim it was except for the first few years including before they entered. They spent a lot of money building up infrastructure then once the factory was as they liked it they cut the budget down to upper midfield level. I think by the time they pulled out the team was starting to show a performance proportional to the budget.

Ferrari has always had issues translating its huge budget into wins but they are very rarely out of championship contention, almost never out of the top 3.

McLaren's budget with Honda put them in a hole behind the top 3 but ahead of almost everyone else. Renault now roughly spend the same as McLaren so it will be interesting to see how the two compare. But it would be foolish to ignore what would happen if McLaren fails to obtain 70-80 million per year by the time the investors decide to stop plugging the funding hole.

McLaren already started reorganizing with new staff before Honda came in, because it was already clear that things needed to change. Honda also paid half of Alonso's salary, which had no effect on McLaren and look at all the sponsors that have left and the drop in prize money. Will McLaren win championships with this budget? Probably not. It simply has to rebuild, like it has done in the past.

[Redragon]

Renault has make it clear, Mclaren will not have influence on the development of the engine as they are just costumers not partnets as they were with Honda http://www.marca.com/motor/formula1/opi ... b45a2.html

[McHonda]

McLaren's "poor" cars in 2013/14 had very little to do with money. In 2013 they went for revolution when everyone else went for evolution and so raced with an immature concept against fully developed ones and in 2014 they got messed around by Mercedes and lost more performance through fuel and software than the car itself.

2015's post Spain and under Prod's influence was already showing the signs of improvement again and Honda's funding only came in for 2015 so wasn't felt on track until 2016. It certainly helps of course but let's not pretend they rescued the car side with that money, there was perfectly good reasons why performance in 13/14 was hampered and indeed this year is the first year since 2012 they'll be starting the season on equal footing for one reason or another, self inflicted like 2013 or engine partner issues like the Turbo era.

But yeah they need to make it count to attract the sponsors to plug the gap until post 2020 when it looks increasingly likely there'll be some form of budget cap and this won't matter so much.

[Talisman]

McLaren already started reorganizing with new staff before Honda came in, because it was already clear that things needed to change. Honda also paid half of Alonso's salary, which had no effect on McLaren and look at all the sponsors that have left and the drop in prize money. Will McLaren win championships with this budget? Probably not. It simply has to rebuild, like it has done in the past.

Honda's money started arriving in 2014. This was accompanied by a large increase in the number of staff at Woking as demonstrated by the number of adverts in Autosport over that year, by formal staff count and by informal reports of staff being poached from other teams.

McLaren is based in the UK so some of their financial details are open to public scrutiny, you can plot their income over the years through records at Company House.

Likewise using similar methods one can see that Honda is NOT putting in significant amounts of money into STR (nor BTW is Red Bull) because we do not see a similar recruitment drive in their British operations.

Alonso is interesting. I'm sure you're right that some of his salary was paid for by Honda. He refused to agree a paycut for 2018 despite McLaren's lower income and his salary now makes up roughly a third of McLaren's income ($40 million out of $120 million although I have excluded the money put in by the owners to compensate for Honda's departure). Whether that is money well spent or not is debatable especially since he is now effectively racing for two teams (Toyota) and that money could be spent making the car more competitive which will in turn attract top drivers if it is good enough for less money.

[Talisman]

McLaren's "poor" cars in 2013/14 had very little to do with money.

Perhaps.

It is then therefore a complete coincidence that McLaren's 'poor' cars happened to be built with the lowest budgets in Woking's recent history.

[RonDennis]

McLaren's "poor" cars in 2013/14 had very little to do with money.

Perhaps.

It is then therefore a complete coincidence that McLaren's 'poor' cars happened to be built with the lowest budgets in Woking's recent history.

It was a reorganization, which means people leave and new people come in. How do you even know Alonso refused to take a paycut? You talk a lot, but none of it makes real sense to be honest.

You are also saying that the 2013 was terrible because of a lack of budget, but do you actually know that the development takes place in 2012? 2013 should have been an evolution of the 2012 car, but Whitmarsh decided to built a completely new chassis. Nobody understood why, because the 2012 was the best chassis at the end of the year. Do you actually believe that a company will develop a completely new car in the last year before a big rule change when they have less money to spend. It makes no sense.

Everyone in here understands that more money helps, but don't act like every bad year is caused by a lack of money.

[Talisman]

I think you need to take a closer look at the business side of McLaren’s operations rather that their PR.

If you don’t understand or don’t want to acknowledge that McLaren increased its staff massively during 2014 thanks to a leap in budget then I can’t help you I’m afraid. F1 isn’t a fairy tale, it’s a business with a car as the end product.

Re Alonso’s salary it has been well reported as being around 40 million per year in 2017 and on his new contract for 2018.