Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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Glyn
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Joined: 09 Sep 2012, 20:25

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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It just seemed like everyone was quick to not accept responsibility for anything. As if they were scared.
So many managers managing managers. All pointing fingers.

No one stood up and said, wtf are you doing. This is awful.

They talk about winning, but they aren't realistic in how they're actually performing. They couldn't even build the car on time....

bonjon1979
30
Joined: 11 Feb 2009, 17:16

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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I don’t think alonso, came out of that documentary very well. He was pretty rude and sarcastic with most people. Didn’t seem like a man of the team at all, I guess because he was hardly ever there. For example, they said that he heading been to the factory that winter until the unveiling of the car, or seen it before until it was revealed. That seems in stark contrast to some drivers who seem to be in the factory a lot of the time. Of course, the documentary could be false but since it’s mclaren producing it I’d find it strange that they lie about their own driver...

bonjon1979
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Joined: 11 Feb 2009, 17:16

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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Redragon wrote:
11 Feb 2018, 13:08
The first test of the car after the oil tank, Alonso mention problems of brakes and suspension and stops.becauae considers the car is too dangerous to drive, vibrattions problems start to appear after the third change of engine while Vandorme test on second day. We can continue blaming Honda but Maclren finish to mount the car 1 hour before sending it to Barcelona.
I didn’t hear/ see that, I thought he said there were problems with the engine braking and that the drivability of the engine made it impossible to drive.

astracrazy
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Joined: 04 Mar 2009, 16:04

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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In my eyes mclaren have fallen a long way from where they once were and how i imagined them to be. Almost suffering from now being top heavy, too many cooks and all that. Can anyone imagine being so relaxed about being behind schedule with Ron in charge?

I kind of felt like i was watching a team who had lost there identity. So desperate to change from what they were before deciding what they wanted to be.

Alonso came across as someone who had no hope going into the season before it started. I felt he had no faith in the changes and maybe didnt even feel they were a good thing (i felt sarcasm laughing at the press officer because he was happy with the changes and commenting on the orange livery).

Joseki
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Joined: 09 Oct 2015, 19:30

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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Andres125sx wrote:
12 Feb 2018, 20:15
McMika98 wrote:
10 Feb 2018, 11:15
It was just testing, there was an entire season to push for given they had to stick it out with Honda regardless. I agree he had to tell the truth and be critical but there are diplomatical ways of expressing the same truth and bracing for a tough season. They gave up on the season after testing and what followed during the season was even disastrous.
Honda delivered on the timeline just not on the performance benchmark. The reasons for which can be discussed in the engine thread of this forum.
I feel Alonso is the white elephant in the room, i love the guy and root for him but as a company id rather look out for my future interest than placate him. Last year with all the honda funds, free engine and corporate sponsors the team was the only team to make a financial loss. This year the sponsors have left in droves and nothing significant has come in to balance his hefty price tag. To paraphrase Eric, the domino effect will be rolling fast.
So you agree Honda was a disaster, add McLaren was also disastrous at some aspects, and your idea to solve this is firing Alonso, the only part in the team who performed as expected?


#-o
He's right, he doesn't belong in such a mess, he should be in a Mercedes. I guess that this was his point.
bonjon1979 wrote:
12 Feb 2018, 23:04
I don’t think alonso, came out of that documentary very well. He was pretty rude and sarcastic with most people. Didn’t seem like a man of the team at all, I guess because he was hardly ever there. For example, they said that he heading been to the factory that winter until the unveiling of the car, or seen it before until it was revealed. That seems in stark contrast to some drivers who seem to be in the factory a lot of the time. Of course, the documentary could be false but since it’s mclaren producing it I’d find it strange that they lie about their own driver...
Maybe you should rewatch the part where a man in the factory talked about Alonso is a boost for the morale the moment he puts a foot in the MTC.

How many days a driver has to be at the factory is not improvised or based on feelings, it is something written in the contracts.

Talisman
2
Joined: 30 Dec 2017, 01:37

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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bonjon1979 wrote:
12 Feb 2018, 23:04
Of course, the documentary could be false but since it’s mclaren producing it I’d find it strange that they lie about their own driver...
McLaren didn't produce the documentary. They invited a production company in. There is a big difference. While the documentary seems pretty 'fair' to me since none of us have experienced what actually went on we are not in a position to judge. Certainly there is little Honda input.

I thought that McLaren missed a big opportunity here. We are told at times, especially at the launch, that 2017 will be an entirely new era. McLaren will go into the post-Ron phase. There is a big problem with this, I'm sure that I'm not alone in thinking that the values I think of when I see McLaren are largely in common with or due to Ron. What does McLaren stand for without him? Unlike Ferrari post-Enzo McLaren clearly want to move on and differentiate the new era from the old. Ron didn't drop out because he died, he was ejected forcibly by the rest of the shareholders in bitter infighting. I can understand McLaren not allowing this topic to be discussed in the documentary but why not use it to explain more about what the McLaren of the future will stand for? Its clearly important enough to change the livery completely and drop the MP4 moniker and keep dropping comments about it pre-launch. Its also clearly being used as spin for sponsors too.

The livery is a case in point. Noone seems particularly happy with it. Zac's only point is that some part of the car shouldn't be black. Alonso seems unimpressed. We know what the orange stands for, what about the black and white? What about the speedmark? Why not tell us what it all represents?

Zac is sold to us as the commercial genius yet he seems distinctly uninvolved in key publicity related events. He has no input until the end on the livery. He is told by Matt Bishop what to say at the launch when surely he should be masterminding the message going out to the press? Why is he not involved in shaping the product he is supposed to sell? Why doesn't he tell the programme what his plans are for McLaren post-Ron?

How are major decisions made at the team? Neale's pre-season post-test speech is made to sound as if the decision has been made to leave Honda already, perhaps it already had. Was it Brown, Boullier and Neale who made the decision? Was it the shareholders who pushed it onto them? Was it combined? And what exactly does Boullier manage apart from the drivers?

As for Honda I disagree with the criticism of the personnel made on this thread but one massive failing hasn't been mentioned at all. At no point before the engine was fired up in Barcelona did anyone from Honda tell anyone at McLaren "things aren't looking good, we're missing targets". Expectation management is key when you have a disaster on your hands and the McLaren response would have been different had they been dripfed updates over the winter however unpleasant that would have been. Utterly shocking mismanagement of partner relations for which even if the engine had been great in the end they deserved being dropped for. The only alternative I can think of is worse, and that is that the engine was absolutely fine and appeared to be on par with Renault, Ferrari and Merc on the dyno but only turned out to be a dud on the track. That is an alternative I refuse to believe.

ivanlesk
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Joined: 17 Nov 2017, 21:09

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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Andres125sx wrote:
12 Feb 2018, 20:15
McMika98 wrote:
10 Feb 2018, 11:15
It was just testing, there was an entire season to push for given they had to stick it out with Honda regardless. I agree he had to tell the truth and be critical but there are diplomatical ways of expressing the same truth and bracing for a tough season. They gave up on the season after testing and what followed during the season was even disastrous.
Honda delivered on the timeline just not on the performance benchmark. The reasons for which can be discussed in the engine thread of this forum.
I feel Alonso is the white elephant in the room, i love the guy and root for him but as a company id rather look out for my future interest than placate him. Last year with all the honda funds, free engine and corporate sponsors the team was the only team to make a financial loss. This year the sponsors have left in droves and nothing significant has come in to balance his hefty price tag. To paraphrase Eric, the domino effect will be rolling fast.
So you agree Honda was a disaster, add McLaren was also disastrous at some aspects, and your idea to solve this is firing Alonso, the only part in the team who performed as expected?


#-o

Haters gonna hate.

Webber2011
10
Joined: 25 Jan 2011, 01:01
Location: Australia NSW

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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I've watched it 4 times now.
Honestly, I expected it to be a Honda bash fest but it was pretty fair.

Enough has been said with everyone giving their opinion on that I guess.

One of the things that surprised me was the amount of time given to Stoffel's training regime.
He certainly took it very seriously, as did the team.

Yet hardly a mention of Fernando's training apart from showing him smashing out a few laps in a kart.

Joseki
28
Joined: 09 Oct 2015, 19:30

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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The documentary is about Vandoorne, it's called Grand Prix Driver, not Drivers. It's obvious it focused more on Vandoorne instead of Alonso.

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bauc
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Joined: 19 Jun 2013, 10:03
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This was a series about the drivers after all (check title), that is why it was given so much time towards the training ect...
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f1316
78
Joined: 22 Feb 2012, 18:36

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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Overall I think it was fundamentally not a particularly interesting documentary - the story arc was nothing more than ‘McLaren trying to make a good car, turns out the engine’s no good , they get another engine for next year’; they would have been better off holding off and finishing the arc with what actually happens with Renault.

Also, even as someone with an insatiable appetite for all things F1, I wasn’t that enthralled with the details on show, so I can imagine a casual viewer would be bored to tears.

That said, some tid bits I found worthwhile:

- gives a real insight into the strengths and weaknesses of McLaren; they have great facilities and are in many ways set up like a big tech company, and yet there are elements of their company culture that just don’t fit with the required mindset to function in a modern way - I.e. (and it’s a little thing but indicative of a broader style) everyone sitting around in shirts and ties. They’re an engineering company and there’s really no need for it - that kind of thing won’t foster creativity or a progressive culture.

- the level of disconnect between chassis builder and engine manufacturer is shocking; more than ever these two need to be in sync - I’d suggest that the big jump from Ferrari last year had a lot to do with the company restructure more closely aligning the two, which were already under the same roof - and yet McLaren build a car with no sight of the PU and, lo and behold, it doesn’t fit or function as expected. What a surprise.

- as someone with a lot of experience of Japanese companies, the little we saw of Honda was scarily familiar. The ethos can work to produce results that no western company would have come up with, but the culture clash is huge and difficult to bridge, particularly when two separate companies not under the same umbrella


Overall, I’d love to see the same premise with a different team next year - would be fascinating to see the difference between McLaren and Ferrari,for example; there’d likely be the same kinds of strengths and weaknesses on show but I suspect absolutely opposite ends of the spectrum. Or maybe not - maybe a younger company like Red Bull are the most different - but the contrast would add something to this documentary; if this is all they ever make, I think it’s fairly mediocre.

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bauc
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OMG you people, you should work in Hollywood or in politics.... your ability to turn facts upside down, to create stories, to add twists is some of the best fictional work I have seen.

Tell me techman, what is the relation between the floor being late and Honda not having a working software to fire up the engine in season 3? (which is effectively year 4) ''Small'' things like this tell the bigger picture.

And for the 100th time, both sides had their mistakes, it was clearly shown in the show and it was pretty fair towards Honda till the firing of the engine and the guys from Honda running around with laptops ect. The spec 3.0 had no power, no reliability & difficult driveability - those are facts!
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f1316
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Joined: 22 Feb 2012, 18:36

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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techman wrote:
13 Feb 2018, 10:16
the whole documentary was biased toward mclaren. honda engineers had little to no say in it. its all about honda one sided bashing from mclaren and their crew talking about honda civic engine and other name calling. we did not hear honda saying anything about the late floor or others. its just one sided docu to put more blame on honda. no worries just blame everything on honda but this is year we will see the reality.
I thought that scene with the engineers talking about ‘Honda Civic’ seemed SO staged - like the documentary makers were saying “we know Alonso said this but have no footage of it - let’s get the engineers to ‘casually’ drop it into conversation so we can show it”.

Talisman
2
Joined: 30 Dec 2017, 01:37

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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bauc wrote:
13 Feb 2018, 10:30
OMG you people, you should work in Hollywood or in politics.... your ability to turn facts upside down, to create stories, to add twists is some of the best fictional work I have seen.

Tell me techman, what is the relation between the floor being late and Honda not having a working software to fire up the engine in season 3? (which is effectively year 4) ''Small'' things like this tell the bigger picture.

And for the 100th time, both sides had their mistakes, it was clearly shown in the show and it was pretty fair towards Honda till the firing of the engine and the guys from Honda running around with laptops ect. The spec 3.0 had no power, no reliability & difficult driveability - those are facts!
I wasn’t particularly bothered by either the myriad chassis delays or the minor PU issues such as the pins or inability to start the unit remotely from Japan. They are little niggles that I suspect most teams encounter regularly.

While the documentary tried to make the most of these issues they aren’t in the same league as the problems with the PU identified in testing.

Talisman
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Joined: 30 Dec 2017, 01:37

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f1316 wrote:
13 Feb 2018, 11:45
techman wrote:
13 Feb 2018, 10:16
the whole documentary was biased toward mclaren. honda engineers had little to no say in it. its all about honda one sided bashing from mclaren and their crew talking about honda civic engine and other name calling. we did not hear honda saying anything about the late floor or others. its just one sided docu to put more blame on honda. no worries just blame everything on honda but this is year we will see the reality.
I thought that scene with the engineers talking about ‘Honda Civic’ seemed SO staged - like the documentary makers were saying “we know Alonso said this but have no footage of it - let’s get the engineers to ‘casually’ drop it into conversation so we can show it”.
It clearly was staged, they were wearing mics or had a sound boom. The sound was far too clear given that they were talking in a noisy environment.