Seems like only yesterday they had a cashed-up title sponsor, the second best aero package on the grid, the outright best engine, and a pair of World Champion drivers - the sort of summary that'd make most team managers drool. Now they're switching to an unproven engine, are thinking about dropping their more valuable driver, and - most worrying of all - seemingly have no sponsors worth the term.
The good old days mentioned above were the result of the McLaren (read: Ron Dennis) way of doing things. The other teams just want to win; not particularly fussed how, just win, baby. McLaren are different: they don't just want to be the best, they want to be their best. The goal is, for lack of a better word, perfection. When you realise that, Ron's easily-mocked tendency to ask for the ultimate this and the ultimate that becomes perfectly understandable. For McLaren, winning is almost seen as a side effect of doing your job properly: when you have the best car, the best drivers and the best organisation, it's pretty much inevitable. It's an approach that explains why the McLaren team base looks like this.
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| Via FosterAndPartners |
And I like that. When you're working with a $400 million budget and a world-class "Temple of Engineering", anything less betrays a scandalous lack of ambition. That's why I used to be such a McLaren fan, they gave me an ideal to shoot for, a point on the horizon to aid the navigation of my life. And while it was working, it was amazingly impressive: world titles for Lewis Hamilton, Mika Häkkinen, Alain Prost, Niki Lauda and of course, Ayrton Senna - most of them with crushing dominance. When they're hot, God Almighty, they're hot.
But when the wind stops and the sails fall slack, the the whole ship start to look a little silly. That's been McLaren's problem in 2014: the attitude hasn't changed, the this-is-my-serious-face expression is still there, but the effect is completely undermined by being stuck in the midfield. Except the car doesn't even look midfield, it looks like a backmarker. When Vodafone decided to pull the pin at the end of 2013, it ended what I consider one of the all-time classic liveries, the Vodafone chrome-and-Rocket Red. When it debuted in 2006 there was lots of jawboning about whether was tacky or just mildly tasteless, but there was no doubt it was distinctive. In a year dominated by white-and-something paint schemes, it stood out, and after a memorable world title for Lewis and the Silver Age of Button & Hamilton that followed, the Vodafone McLarens cemented their place as classic racing cars, up there with any of the Gulf, Martini or Marlboro liveries the old'uns love to get all teary over.
But Vodafone made their announcement in March 2013. Finding a sponsor prepared to cough up enough cash to fill the sudden $74 million hole in their budget couldn't be a fun job, but Martin Whitmarsh should've been up to it. Imagine what Flavio Briatore could do with that much forewarning - a bit of hand-waving, a few pissed-off phone calls, lots of "Jesus Christ-a"... and twelve months later, the cars'd have a blue-chip title sponsor, a media blitz skiting about it, and a new paint scheme optimised to show them off.
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| Although... (via AUSmotive) |
So what did McLaren do with their twelve-month head start? Kept the chrome, added a Johnny Walker sticker, aaand... that's about it. Even the Johnny sticker looks like an afterthought, the car overall looking like a backmarker from the early '90s, the sort shaking in their boots at the prospect of dropping out in pre-qualifying and having to explain their dismal performance to the overdraft board. And even that's now over: Bernie Ecclestone has just done a deal to make Johnny Walker the official whisky of Formula 1 - a move that usually ends the sponsorship of any particular team. So Johnny Walker has walked, and now, oh yeah, Hugo Boss as well, having realised (as I did) they're Lewis Hamilton fans and not McLaren fans after all. And this all happened just as McLaren announced they were switching to Honda power, so their Mercedes power units haven't been free after all.
Just imagine the sort of budget shortfall that must create (hint: you can't). Panic stations must be in order, and it's no wonder Martin Whitmarsh has already been thrown to the wolves. Poor Martin was in line for the job of McLaren team boss for so long he was called F1's answer to Prince Charles. When Ron Dennis finally stepped aside he managed to make exactly one good decision - hiring Jenson Button - before it all started going south. Since then, all of the above has happened on his watch. And it's not just treasure, under the Whitmarsh Administration McLaren has been haemorhaging talent as well - names like Lewis Hamilton and key personnel like former technical director Paddy Lowe.
So the question now becomes, where do they go from here? The four classical elements were Earth, Fire, Wind and Water. In Formula 1, it's more like Engine, Chassis, Tyre and Driver; getting all four in harmony is the name of the game. Thankfully, two of those have been taken care of already: Pirelli's extended their tyre supply deal for another year, and McLaren are re-opening their partnership with their bosom buddies at Honda, who've just released their first pics of the new powerplant.
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| Via ESPNF1 |
That just leaves the chassis - which this late in the year is certain to be finished already, and is probably being wrung out by the windtunnel and computer sim teams to find performance gains as we speak - which just leaves the drivers, where most of the media interest is. The rumours that Jenson Button is about to lose his seat keep making the rounds, like a mosquito as a barbecue, and there's a cold kind of logic to it. Like Vettel, Jenson hasn't found this new-gen F1 to his liking: the extra torque, turbo lag and lack of rear downforce don't agree with his driving style. It was ever the same: 2007 was one of those years his teammate Rubens Barrichello humiliated him, because the Honda RA107 was twitchy and always stepping out at the back. Rubens could deal with that, drive around it; Jenson could not, and suffered for it. As soon as the car got some rear-end grip, however, courtesy of the double diffuser, Rubens was the one struggling and Jenson was storming to that fantastic 2009 World Championship.
So these days Jenson is slow, and probably always will be. But he has other virtues: he's a former Honda-affiliated driver and knows their people, has 15 years' experience in Formula 1 (very valuable in an age without much testing), including several with Mercedes engines strapped to his back. That by itself would make him my choice: despite the media frenzy, drivers will almost certainly be the least relevant aspect of McLaren in 2015. It's going to be their first season in 20 years without Mercedes power, a transitional year of hard lessons and mechanical gremlins. In a season like that, driver continuity is a plus, especially when one of them has bags of experience with the best engine on the grid.
But at the same time, McLaren are apparently eager to bring on young Kevin Magnussen, so even though he'll be out of contract this December, he seems likely to stay on next year. So who else is in the picture, given that Honda will have opinions on the matter and the cash to back them? There are numerous Honda-affiliated drivers out there (Lucas di Grassi, Takuma Sato, Bruno Senna) but none of them really stand out. Valtteri Bottas is attractive, but Williams are sure to cling to him like a barnacle to a rock, especially when they seem likely to bring in a rookie like Simona de Silvestro next year. Alonso remains a favourite, among the media at least, although it would surely be an expensive deal - Ferrari surely wouldn't have let him have a cheap buy-out option, even if his current stint is supposed to be ending - but if Honda are willing to pay for him, they can almost certainly have him. And Alonso is a deft hand in a bad car, and has a habit of getting them across the finish line far ahead of where it should be, a tasty prospect for a team likely to build a bad car next year.
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| A step up from certain to build a bad car next year... (via ESPNF1) |
So it seems to me either McLaren will retain their drivers for next year, or maybe - maaaaybe - they'll turf Jenson in favour of Fernando, keeping Kevin because of his excellent stopwatch-to-dollar ratio. But as I said, that'll be the least important aspect of McLaren next year. Here's the most important: where the hell will they be getting their money? The sponsor question is so huge, so fundamental, it seems daft to even ask it. Keeping your deals quiet until the official announcement is standard practice, of course, but gossips mean secrets are hard to keep, and the stubborn silence suggests either Ron Dennis has already lined up a sponsor for next year or hasn't managed it yet and doesn't want anyone to know. Would you invest millions of dollars in a team if you knew you'd be the only one? Exactly. Confidence begets confidence.
And from that perspective, it makes a lot of sense that he's keeping Jenson's future in doubt - it's a wonderful way to keep the media distracted. And if that seems too Machiavellian for Ron, remember, this is the man who first called F1 the Piranha Club.
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