Hugely Dissapointed With McLaren

[thestig84]

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.

Do you fully understand what FOTA is?! Mclaren are FOTA!! As are all the other teams, members of the Formula One Teams Association. They are not doing things to 'get in bed' or 'for fota' they are sitting down with all the other teams and doing what they all agree is best for the sport.

If this so happens to look like it is hindering Mclaren then im sure it will even up in the long run when other teams might develop strengths only to find them getting reined in by FOTA.

Mclaren realise this and are cleaver enough to know they wont get far without a healthy F1.

[sebbe]

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.

Thank you WB. I'm very interested in the car manufacturing industry, do you have a link to that data?

Thank you for your insight, Autogyro, but it does support my idea that Ron Dennis didn't choose a economic downturn to launch his car because he's stubborn.

And now back to the topic. How much time do you think, internetf1fan, it will take FIA to ban f-duct for security reasons if a maverick team decide to stick with it?
Not even Ferrari can do whatever they want in F1.
What you're asking McLaren to do is just suicidal.
F1 is as much about politics as it is about racing.

[segedunum]

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?

So the MP4-18 never raced? So what? It was clear after 2002 a pretty big improvement was needed to catch up with Ferrari, and overtake them, and that was essentially a two year project. It was hardly a disaster as ideas were incorporated from it into successive cars and the turnaround in 2004 carried into 2005. The 'anteater' nose carried on into 2006 and 2007. Need I remind you of the MP4-13 and 14? Need I remind you that the MP4-17 was within an engine blowup of winning at least the driver's championship? Heady days.

MP4-20 was a killer car (with a weak engine), and it was not designed by Newey.

Along with Mike Coughlan I think you'll find it was, along with input from Peter Promodrou and Nikolas Tombazis who I think was more instrumental to that car's speed than people realise. Ferrari's aerodynamics has always been strong since he (had to) return there in 2006 after Aldo Costa's disastrous takeover and because of that I'm more confident about Ferrari this season.

The point being that with Pat Fry's departure it is looking increasingly like McLaren just don't have the people any more. They've got sidetracked by other projects this decade like the technology centre as well, much as their road car business might be doing now. That road car business trades on McLaren's racing history, and they're not Ferrari.

So please stop glorifying Adrian, he's just another engineer with good PR.

PR? He's an engineer with results, not to put too fine a point on it, along with a few others that McLaren no longer have. No one person is bigger than a team, but without people a team cannot achieve anything.

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.

Indeed it has. Pat Symonds even went so far as to say they felt at Renault that McLaren made some rather odd decisions in 2005.

Christ, 1998 was the last time McLaren won a constructors' championship (except 2007 of course and even that car was based on the remnants of Newey's and others' ideas). That's twelve years ago. There's been one driver's championship since then that they frankly fell over the line for. McLaren are not the winning team that they once were and masquerade as these days.

[segedunum]

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.

Nevertheless, that's exactly what he has done, althought the MP4-12C isn't strictly speaking a supercar and what McLaren are trying to achieve is to be a British Ferrari without a parent company like Fiat and other associated brands like Maserati. Fiat themselves are trimming and cost cutting across all those brands.

Frankly, McLaren are going to have to come up with something unbelievably spectacular for this car to be the success that they need it to be. The automotive industry is most certainly not in any kind of recovery these days, no matter what many want to tell you, and any car company is going to have to scrap declining and stagnant sales from other manufacturers. The market is saturated at all levels no matter how many incentive schemes they come up with.

[lebesset]

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[autogyro]

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[thestig84]

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[autogyro]

I do not call a 5 percent reduction in sales since 2008 an increase!
The article also does not mention all the lost engine and other sales to contracts within this declining industry.
Of course Ferrari will be the last to go. It will get the best bail out and customer support. This will not prevent the inevitable just make the death longer.

[wesley123]

@segedenum; True, Mclaren has simply lost all of their great staff, this can actually be a huge problem as all of them are incredible designers/engineers and not actually replacable that easy.

McLaren has nou the chance to discover new, young and fresh people for their team and has to build a completely new winning team, this will take a few years whatsoever.

Also Mclaren is going to lose the mercedes engines after 2013, for then they need a new supplier(Volkswagen maybe?) or have to build their own, wich brings new problems on their way.

[internetf1fan]

Can everyone stay on topic please. We're not discussing McLaren road cars here.

So to get back on topic.

1) What does FOTA do?
2) Has FOTA actually changed anything? AFAIK almost everything Max proposed is going through.
3) Why should McLaren be in FOTA? What advantages do McLaren get by being a member of FOTA?
4) Why should McLaren sign up to those stupid gentlemens agreement when KERS etc are perfectly legal under regulations and could possibly be the solution to find those missing 3 tenths that they are lacking to RBR?

@thestig84: No not all teams have to be in FOTA. For a while Williams were out of FOTA. And once they've joined I don't see what they've gained. In frustrates me because if they actually ran the KERS they were developing they might have been slightly more competitive.

FOTA doesn't really do anything for "what is good for the sport". Where was FOTA when Schumacher was handed the 20 second penalty. Pretty much everyone agrees that the penalty was unfair and was bad for the sport and yet there is FOTA... silent. Same with Hamilton in Spa 08.

As far as I see, being a member of FOTA gives you more disadvantages than advantages. For one, you cannot use everything that is legal on your car.

Like I said before, F1 is not a charity. McLaren should learn to be ruthless and use everything in the regulations to build the fastest car under the regulations. If others don't have the expertise or finances to develop the technologies then tough luck.

[internetf1fan]

If McLaren seriously wants to be competitive, then they need to ditch that useless FOTA gentlemens agreement and implement KERS ASAP, especially since this year the regulations allow for more power/time

[thestig84]

If McLaren seriously wants to be competitive, then they need to ditch that useless FOTA gentlemens agreement and implement KERS ASAP, especially since this year the regulations allow for more power/time

I think you made that dubious point in your thread dedicated to those views.

[internetf1fan]

If McLaren seriously wants to be competitive, then they need to ditch that useless FOTA gentlemens agreement and implement KERS ASAP, especially since this year the regulations allow for more power/time

I think you made that dubious point in your thread dedicated to those views.

What exactly is so dubious about my point? If they can't get to RBR via aero, then they have to look at other avenues. KERS is one area which is in the regulations which they don't use.

[thestig84]

@thestig84: No not all teams have to be in FOTA. For a while Williams were out of FOTA. And once they've joined I don't see what they've gained. In frustrates me because if they actually ran the KERS they were developing they might have been slightly more competitive.

You missed my point in the fact that Mclaren are not IN FOTA they ARE FOTA. The teams make up the association. It is about the sport. No team is bigger than the sport. Mclaren need F1 to be a successful series as it in turn makes them more successful as a business. The teams felt the FIA didnt always make the best decisions so united, putting differences aside to (hopefully, fota is still in its infancy) improve the sport.

Williams were ejected from FOTA for breaking ranks and signing up to the FIA series when a split was on the cards. It did Williams no favours and they were looking for a way back in when the split was sorted out.

[thestig84]

If McLaren seriously wants to be competitive, then they need to ditch that useless FOTA gentlemens agreement and implement KERS ASAP, especially since this year the regulations allow for more power/time

I think you made that dubious point in your thread dedicated to those views.

What exactly is so dubious about my point? If they can't get to RBR via aero, then they have to look at other avenues. KERS is one area which is in the regulations which they don't use.

Well apart from the huge FOTA reasons mentioned in you dedicated thread your idea runs into a rather epic fail with the fact the car would not even have the ability to package kers effectively.