Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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Redragon
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Joined: 24 May 2011, 12:23

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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Talisman wrote:
13 Feb 2018, 12:15
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.
I got the same feeling with the journalists dinner.

techman
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Joined: 09 Jun 2016, 10:25

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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the whole docu looks staged from mclaren mechanics calling the engine honda civic and neale saying its over with honda experiment even before the season started and driver bashing the engine. its 4 sure exciting drama for TV no doubt. no wonder only mclaren twitter gave much publicity to the whole amazon driver show , i checked honda twitter nothing was mentioned about it. Its a set up staged event to make mclaren good and honda bad. anyone can see it clearly.

Jolle
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Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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I've watched the whole series.

I found McLaren submissive and waiting... almost contempt with a car that just isn't finished. Managers with crossed armes talking in meetings about how they are missing every deadline.

The rest it all looks like a commercial to gain sponsorship and "look, without honda we are a investable team!"

There might be off camera, but during the whole series I saw no leadership. Just mangers telling that they are behind.

Talisman
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Joined: 30 Dec 2017, 01:37

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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Watching the rest there are some interesting and possibly unintended bits of info included. We see a mechanic towards the end screwing a chassis together telling us its destined for Honda in Japan. This strongly suggests that Honda DOES have an engine in car dyno in Sakura. During the early season we were told that the vibration issues were not picked up pre-testing because they hadn't been seen in the dynos to that point. I had assumed that Honda had neglected to invest in an engine-in-car dyno but it turns out that the reality was that Honda weren't given a Mclaren chassis to bolt it into pre-testing and this would have been logistically impossible anyway.

While in retrospect this seems obvious given how late the chassis is put together at McLaren and presumably other teams as well it hadn't occurred to me that this could be the case at all. This would explain some of Cyril's comments in the early season where he said he felt nothing but sympathy towards Honda and that other companies could have made the same error.

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bauc
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Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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Amazon's McLaren series needed to keep 'authentic' controversies

The original intention of Grand Prix Driver was to focus on Stoffel Vandoorne's rookie season in F1.
Brown said there was no second thought to keeping the filming going when the back story of Honda's woes emerged.
"It wasn't what we had planned for last year, but it was very authentic, very real and that is what the sport needs to do more of for the fans," he added.

Full text on below link:

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/13436 ... zon-series
Формула 1 на Македонски - The first ever Macedonian Formula 1 YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJkjCv ... 6rVRgKASwg

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dren
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Joined: 03 Mar 2010, 14:14

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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I was on the fence about watching the series. Thanks for the summaries on here; I think I will pass.
Honda!

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NathanOlder
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Joined: 02 Mar 2012, 10:05
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Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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Its only about 100mins total, so not like you need to dedicate to it. I think its worth the watch, and its no longer than the average movie.
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kptaylor
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Joined: 01 Feb 2012, 22:11
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Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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I was disappointed they continuously blurred out the PUs in the shots like a they were some kind of porn... Nothing to see regarding the PUs and any special way Honda are putting things together.

Phillyred
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Joined: 08 Apr 2010, 18:46

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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It was a --- series.. 4 lousy episode? Would have been nice to see the break downs as the 2017 season progressed.

bonjon1979
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Joined: 11 Feb 2009, 17:16

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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Talisman wrote:
13 Feb 2018, 00:45
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.
It was my understanding that they had a veto on final cut.

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Andres125sx
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Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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That´s obvious, there have been cameras inside their factory so they, as any other in their position, must have a veto on final cut or they would have never accepted cameras into their factory filming confidential stuff

rogazilla
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Joined: 05 Oct 2017, 16:35

Re: Amazon Prime "Grand Prix Driver"

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A few observations from this documentary.

1: didn’t show any collaboration between Honda and Mclaren. From James Keys comment sounds like they have meetings all the time and TR has technicians on site in Japan during tuning. Not saying McLaren didn’t but didn’t show in this documentary.

2: Honda didn’t have a chassis until after filming or after testing from McLaren.

3: the Honda person on site wasn’t very good at communication or able to improvise quickly when part didn’t fit.

My personal feeling from this documentary makes it feel more like a customer team with Honda as pu provider and not really a works team collaborative environment. Maybe it is just the way the documentary presents and not the reality but that’s just from watching this.

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