I think this is a big misinterpretation of Marko. He was at every trackside meeting, every strategy meeting. Not to sit around and think about driver lineups, but because he was a moderator for how they approach the weekends.
This is to me also the biggest clash amongst them all as Horner and Marko could at some point not change the situation anymore.
For the drivers: To me it is still the biggest point about Sainz. Why did he not come back to RB? Was it Marko or Horner?
I would not interpret too much into this.
McLaren is playing strongly the Good boy - Bad boy game. They try so hard that they shoot themselves in the foot with it.
Now Horner and Verstappen were the perfect bad boy targets. Of course they played this like fiddles.
Now comes smiling Mekies: Of course they can not start a fight out of nowhere. That would make them the bad boy.
Be assured, once there is a crash, one bad word by Mekies...the party will start.
I think he might have changed the trackside issues:
In the past whenever they were running into correlation/setup issues Newey came to the track and solved the situation, changed the approach how they went into FP1. This happend more than once.
Already 2023 the problems startet and Newey was not happy how he could operate back then. This constant struggle on how they set up the car, this constant failure in FP1 and FP2 went on till Horner was sacked. Since then then the number of lost Fridays went down strongly. Now maybe it was Marko who now could operate freely or it was Mekies, implementing his RB strategies. Hope we find out in the future.
