Hugely Dissapointed With McLaren

[internetf1fan]

Don't get me wrong, I love McLaren, but some of the decisions they take just makes my mind boggle.

1)F1 is not charity and you should use every advantage you have to win.

What was McLaren thinking getting rid of KERS after spending almost a year perfecting it and finnally reaping the rewards at the end of the season? If it's in the regulations and it makes you go faster use it!

McLaren in FOTA is just stupid. They should be in it to win it. Why is McLaren in FOTA anyway? When have other teams ever come to McLaren's defence? The other teams don't like McLaren and will use every opportunity to undermine them. Eff the gentelman's agreements.

I am dissapointed that they agreed to get rid of F-duct for next year as well due to FOTA. Ridiculous. Use everything you have to win!

2)Play to your strenghts.

McLarens have always been strong at mechanical grip. Even their dog of a car was showing speed at tracks like Monaco, Monza, Singapore, Abu Dabhi.

Generally you would be guaranteed a lot of tracks were McLaren's would be very competitive.

This year they've made a half assed effort to be "aero" completely compromising their main strenght, which means they're neither here or there in performance. They can't catch red bulls in high speed stuff and they're getting beat by cars like Renault in slow speed stuff.


What I would like to see is McLaren ditching FOTA and using everything to have to make the fastest car possible.

Go back to their old strenghts, mechanical grip.
Go back to KERS, the implementation is even more relaxed.
Keep the F-duct, can you imagine what KERS + Fduct would do? It would be devastating.

And finnaly ditch FOTA.

[WhiteBlue]

What was McLaren thinking getting rid of KERS after spending almost a year perfecting it and finnally reaping the rewards at the end of the season?

I thought is was developed with Mercedes money at MBHPE Ltd.

[internetf1fan]

By perfecting I meant perfecting the weight distribution issues and other disadvantages that comes to packaing compromises.

[wesley123]

The KERs is an Zytek system, it was revealed last year.

Further, i dont understand your ideas. Sure, going out of the FOTa and run all forbidden parts will make them beloved...
The FOTA was made for the teams to discuss about rules etc. Guess what happens when mclaren steps out and starts running kers etc.? Thats right, the FOTA will simply fall apart due to this joke.

[autogyro]

Fota was 'made' for the benefit of the big car manufacturer teams and to delay the development of things like Kers, so as to allow car companies to capitalise out of the first and now obsolete generation of Hybrid systems using the previous years Kers investments.
Fota was also 'made' for these big car companies to force another delay in the cost restrictions of F1 teams in the face of their main companies real and essential need to reduce expense.
This is one reason that Montezemolo dumped Fota and was removed from Fiat, to be left at Ferari as a fall guy as Ferrari sheds workers and slashes costs.
Dennis is anothe example of a narrow focused monolith intent on building obsolete kiddy cars in the face of the world recession.
The McLaren F1 car this year is IMO at the peak of its development and has little in the way of inovative ideas that work, it is to slow period and now has little development available. It should be binned and next years car developed.

[BreezyRacer]

McLaren's advantages left with Adrian Newey. They are doing all they can do now. Teams win, teams lose, deal with it, it's what racing is. Tradition means nothing, performance means everything.

[internetf1fan]

McLaren's advantages left with Adrian Newey. They are doing all they can do now. Teams win, teams lose, deal with it, it's what racing is. Tradition means nothing, performance means everything.

That's what I am takling about. Not tradition, but performance. McLaren is NOT doing everything they can. Why is McLaren not using everything in it's arsenal that is allowed in the regulations? We all saw how effective KERS can be when it was properly sorted out last year. This year the regulations regarding power output are even more lax.

With the loss of Newey, McLaren should be using every possible avenue to get an upperhand on the rivals. Instead they go around joining hands and signing up to some stupid gentleman's agreements regarding not using KERS and F-ducts.

F1 is not charity. For some reason McLaren is intentionally harming their perofmance even when regulations would perfectly allow for the things they agreed to get rid of due to FOTA.

Can anyone tell me what has FOTA ever done for McLaren? Absolutely nothing.

This years McLaren is not slow by anymeans. It seems to be equal to the Ferrari and the only car that is faster is RB. I just wished McLaren would add those final few things that would make the car equal to RB. KERS for one would go a long way.

[sebbe]

McLaren's advantages left with Adrian Newey.

Yea, do you want me to remind you about MP4-18? Do you want to know were that chassis is? Do you remember how many times it failed FIA's crash test? Should I talk about the flaws in Newey's designs?
MP4-20 was a killer car (with a weak engine), and it was not designed by Newey.
So please stop glorifying Adrian, he's just another engineer with good PR.

To InternetF1Fan: McLaren leaving FOTA is just stupid. Leaving Fota doesn't mean you'll be able to run banned devices.
The MP4-25 it's not a dog of a car. It's just that it can't produce a fast lap in Q3, yet. In the last couple of races it has been too slow compared to Red Bull, that's a fact. It's doesn't look bad at races.
It just need raw speed.

McLaren as a team has been doing stupid things since Australia, it's just their fault the pit stops are not fast enough, it's their fault poor strategy or lack of speed to change strategy during the races. That has always been the greatest weak point in the team.
And it certainly was their fault to leave a cover in Jenson's car that cooked the engine.

So please, stop blaming Fota and blame McLaren.
And I'm a Macca fan, by the way.

[WhiteBlue]

It would probably help the factual side of this discussion to know the decision making mechanism of the F1 Commission. Teams are basically making the decisions there and have them rubber stamped by the FiA. Fota was nothing but the predecessor of the current F1 Commission. With the demise of the majority of manufacturers and the emergence of more private teams the equilibrium has changed substantially this year.

You have Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull basically as the rich teams with excellent finances but in the case of McLaren burdened by their road car focus.

Williams,Renault, ToroRosso and Force India are somewhat in the middle. Sauber, Virgin, Lotus and HRT are all pretty cash strapped.

Depending of the issue the middle teams will rather vote with the poor guys because they are closer in budget to them than the rich guys. A good example is tyres. Rich teams don't care very much if the tyres cost 1 million or 3 million $ per team. They are more interested to buy good quality and run no risks of getting something fundamentally wrong like Merc did this season. The poor teams say "sodd all, we just pay the minimum". As they have to come to a common decision in the end the rich teams will have to pay more to get their way and the poor teams know this.

[sebbe]

You have Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull basically as the rich teams with excellent finances but in the case of McLaren burdened by their road car focus.

Hi WB, could you be more specific about McLaren burdened by the car division? Or is it just speculation. Do you have external sources?
I think everybody's jumping into conclusions about the impact of McLaren Automotive over the F1 operations.

To autogyro:
And Ron Dennis is not a narrow focused monolith who decided to launch a super car in the middle of the economic downturn. Designing a car takes years, and setting up a Car brand even more.

[WhiteBlue]

You have Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull basically as the rich teams with excellent finances but in the case of McLaren burdened by their road car focus.

Hi WB, could you be more specific about McLaren burdened by the car division? Or is it just speculation. Do you have external sources?

The decision to do the MP4-12C and other road car models in competition to Merc have cut McLaren off some 100 mil $ per annum and more which they used to be payed in development subsidies (50% of all development budget), driver subsidies ( I believe 50% as well), free power train supply with a veto to supply to other teams and a marketing subsidy towards the brand palace. They were also making money from the road car without having to spend any own money on development and manufacturing.

Now they are faced with substantial investment without having a sponsor of the previous quality of Mercedes. The development of follow up models and the manufacturing investment will have to come from additional debt which will increase the leveraging and the risk (beta in finance).

In terms of cash flow my above considerations should make it very clear that McLaren cannot operate anywhere near the level that Ferrari commands or they used to have with Merc.

[autogyro]

One of my ex partners was a chief test driver for a big car manufacturer and I have also been involved with sports car manufacture.
I can tell you that Mclaren, with all its money (if it still has any) is not much better than a kit car manufacturer compared to the likes of BMW or Mercedese.
It used to take around five years to bring a production saloon to the public, two years to design and built a prototype and three more years to sort out problems before full production.
Today things work faster and usualy with many more problems.
A sports car special (and I purposely do not call the Mclaren a supercar), takes a lot less time because the design is far simpler than a car for the masses.
McLaren did make one narrow focused supercar and were contracted by Mercedese to make another for them but this has little if anything to do with production cars.
The current car that Dennis is developing is neither one thing or the other and IMO will be the end of McLaren if they are not very careful.

[internetf1fan]

To InternetF1Fan: McLaren leaving FOTA is just stupid. Leaving Fota doesn't mean you'll be able to run banned devices.

Who said anything about running banned devices. I am talking about getting into bed with FOTA and not running stuff like KERS that IS allowed in this years regulations. Now they are pretty much doing the same with F-duct next year.

McLaren are voluntareely discarding their strengths for FOTA for no reason even when they're perfectly allowed under the regulations. They pretty much had the perfect KERS system at the end of last year and just threw it out of the window,... for FOTA.

McLaren need to focus on what they're good at and stop signing up for those stupid FOTA "Gentleman's agreement", which means bull as no one is going to stand up for McLAren if anything goes wrong as McLaren have found out multiple times in the past.

[flynfrog]

To InternetF1Fan: McLaren leaving FOTA is just stupid. Leaving Fota doesn't mean you'll be able to run banned devices.

Who said anything about running banned devices. I am talking about getting into bed with FOTA and not running stuff like KERS that IS allowed in this years regulations. Now they are pretty much doing the same with F-duct next year.

McLaren are voluntareely discarding their strengths for FOTA for no reason even when they're perfectly allowed under the regulations. They pretty much had the perfect KERS system at the end of last year and just threw it out of the window,... for FOTA.

McLaren need to focus on what they're good at and stop signing up for those stupid FOTA "Gentleman's agreement", which means bull as no one is going to stand up for McLAren if anything goes wrong as McLaren have found out multiple times in the past.

they are in bed with the FOTA to prevent the FIA from walking all over them along with the other teams.

[andrew]

To answer the topic title, I am far from disappointed with McLaren. I have never been a fan of Hamilton and I never will be and I have gone right off Button of late. I have to admit, I rasied a smile when Button retired from the race.