Emag wrote: ↑24 Jun 2024, 00:13
CjC wrote: ↑23 Jun 2024, 23:49
The most telling part for me was Norris’ comment ‘95% of the people designing the car have been here 5 to 10 years’
He’s confirmed what I’ve been thinking over the last 12 months, what the hell have they been doing all these years??
10 years only puts you back to 2014. If you assume they only started working back then for McLaren, I don't remember any "big name" making headlines (apart from Peter Prodromou being snatched from RedBull), then it's not unreasonable to think these were people with not so much experience in the sport. 10 years is a significant amount of experience in any professional environment, and it will make pretty much anyone better at their job, whatever that job is.
Before 2014, McLaren had been bleeding people left right and center from the moment Mercedes decided to join F1 as a works team. Add to that a very very poor upper management, with certain people remaining responsible for too long after fumbling the bag multiple times. Also very poor infrastructure compared to the top teams at the time combined with the Honda slump.
There's really so much that went wrong with McLaren the past decade, it's difficult to sum it up in just a single comment on an online forum.
The long story short is,
Setting aside the much needed investments in terms of infrastructure that came from 2018-2019 and onwards, a Formula 1 team's ceiling (much like any business) is heavily decided by human resources and how well those resources are managed.
You could have 10 Neweys in a team, if you put them under a lower-caliber individual, you've just severely bottlenecked the talents in your team. And you know, engineers aren't exactly known for being super outspoken individuals. Most are there to just do their jobs much like you and me in every day life.
If you are confident that you have a better idea about a certain thing, but management decides to go in a completely different direction, most people will just go ahead and carry out with what management desires. It's one of the biggest limiters McLaren had to deal with over the last couple of years since their resurgence.
They really had quite some talented people working for them, but they were poorly managed and under-utilized.
And we're talking about a sport where margins are measured in tenths of seconds. It's just a bunch of little things stacked together that make the difference in the end. If your team is firing in all cylinders, then you're right there at the top. If part of it is slipping ever so slightly, it will be reflected on laptime.
Precisely. Up until 3 races ago I thought the same was happening at Mercedes in this current rule cycle = brain drain but it’s seems they had steadied their ship.
Anyway, I was looking more at the last 5 years. If I’m not mistaken last seasons development to become podium contenders came using the old infrastructure, maybe the new driver in loop simulator had been completed?
Like you say Peter Prod has been there for awhile now, if he’s has the same aero department give or take a few percent for the past 5 years then you have to assume they were capable of delivering a podium contending car then too- management has just held them back.
If you recall there was much optimism about the 2022 rule set- it was seen as an opportunity and if anything Mclaren took a step back in performance- to his credit Zak acted and with a bit of good fortune was able to make immediate changes and here we are now
I just have the sense of what might have been that’s all, no trolling, no slandering the team.
But that’s the past, looking forward Mwillems commented how it’s a shame that the new rule cycle in coming in so soon but as Lando confirmed, this current team, now equipped with the current infrastructure should at the very least stay a top 4 team and out of the midfield going into the next rule cycle.
