2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

[genarro]

Interesting read on peoples views.
The reality is that Mclarens performance over the decades has always had a strong correlation to the resources they had to work with at the time. There have been periods when they have "somewhat" overperformed, sometimes when they have "somewhat" underperformed, but for me they have generally been around where they should have been.
You can always look to periods where the senior management fell far short - Eric Boullier springs to mind.
But Mclaren and Ferrari both have had these cycles, and what has always brought them back to the front, eventually, has been the willingness to make radical changes - something I think we haven't seen from the likes of Williams (until now? maybe?). Ron was willing to do that, and now we have seen Zak Brown being willing to do that.
Ron had his time - it was right he went when he did, his era was over, the way he did business was consigned to history.
One thing Ron always told his staff - When you work for MClaren, it is in your DNA, and yours will become part of Mclaren ... whether you move on or not, the Mclaren DNA will always be in you.

Mclaren will always have Ron's DNA

I hadn't heard that quote of Ron before, nice.

McLaren endured an almost legendary low period of more than a decade with just the Monza 2021 win to break the drought and another 3 years before a return to competitiveness. It could be argued that the 2007 conflict with Max Mosley lay the seeds of destruction for the then great team - the 100 million fine, exclusion from the championship and subsequent loss of credibility with it's engine supplier. The fall was sudden but the reasons clear in retrospect, as they usually are, though hard to discern at the time. Hamilton suddenly defected, shocking the F1 world and was proven to be a harbinger of what was to come. Honda arrived, unprepared and in some disarray, Ron delegated his F1 leadership to a less than strong TP.

Zak grew into the top job and employed leadership principles that empowered others. This will almost always require a weeding out process, as we saw from the restructuring of early 2023. Now the pieces of the puzzle started to fit neatly together and the appointment of Sanchez proved redundant, the blueprint for the 2024 success was now laid. The McLaren DNA still survives, Zak is a McLaren man through and through. They now just have to learn how to fly again - success breeds success.

It wasnt the 2007 scandal, that brought McLaren to a decade long low, because if you look at it, the team was competitive to around 2012, so 5 years after the scandal. The problem was the structure that was proposed by Ron and executed by M.Whitmarsh, the infamous matrix structure. It was apparently in an attempt to reduce the power of Newey. And so he left and there was no accountability by other senior staff, they were able to shift blame to each other. It must have been a toxic enviorement that completelly numbed the performance of the team. We all remember what insiders were reporting about the treatement of staff (given chocolate bars as compensation) and senior staff just drinking coffe and laughing of things (Goss and co.) whilist the results on track were catastrophic. And then came Honda with its gp2 engine wich made things 10xtimes worse and even accelerated the decline to an ever bigger low. Thank god these times are behind us.

Zak really is the reason that things started to turn around and he is the saviour of the team. Rebuilding a team that lost its way as much as McLaren did is impressive and a project that took a couple of attempts and wasnt always easy. He was able to free the existing talent in the team while adding it.

Good times look to be ahead of us and i will enjoy every moment of it.

[101FlyingDutchman]

Love the part where the mouse hole is an exit oppose to intended use of being an entry hole

Because it is perfectly sensible for a fluid to avoid getting sucked in the low pressure zone of diffuser, choosing to go to high pressure zone outside instead

Never heard of “FWF aka Free Will Fluid dynamics”
Yeah the second drawing is absolute horlicks

[F1NAC]

Honestly, neither of those two floor illustrations is anywhere near accurate, especially the McL38 "flow" illustration in the bottom

Love the part where the mouse hole is an exit oppose to intended use of being an entry hole

Who said that the air is entering from the front? I'm interested how are this drawings being made? Looking for photos online and then drawing shades and hopefully you nailed what you inteded?

[BMMR61]

Interesting read on peoples views.
The reality is that Mclarens performance over the decades has always had a strong correlation to the resources they had to work with at the time. There have been periods when they have "somewhat" overperformed, sometimes when they have "somewhat" underperformed, but for me they have generally been around where they should have been.
You can always look to periods where the senior management fell far short - Eric Boullier springs to mind.
But Mclaren and Ferrari both have had these cycles, and what has always brought them back to the front, eventually, has been the willingness to make radical changes - something I think we haven't seen from the likes of Williams (until now? maybe?). Ron was willing to do that, and now we have seen Zak Brown being willing to do that.
Ron had his time - it was right he went when he did, his era was over, the way he did business was consigned to history.
One thing Ron always told his staff - When you work for MClaren, it is in your DNA, and yours will become part of Mclaren ... whether you move on or not, the Mclaren DNA will always be in you.

Mclaren will always have Ron's DNA

I hadn't heard that quote of Ron before, nice.

McLaren endured an almost legendary low period of more than a decade with just the Monza 2021 win to break the drought and another 3 years before a return to competitiveness. It could be argued that the 2007 conflict with Max Mosley lay the seeds of destruction for the then great team - the 100 million fine, exclusion from the championship and subsequent loss of credibility with it's engine supplier. The fall was sudden but the reasons clear in retrospect, as they usually are, though hard to discern at the time. Hamilton suddenly defected, shocking the F1 world and was proven to be a harbinger of what was to come. Honda arrived, unprepared and in some disarray, Ron delegated his F1 leadership to a less than strong TP.

Zak grew into the top job and employed leadership principles that empowered others. This will almost always require a weeding out process, as we saw from the restructuring of early 2023. Now the pieces of the puzzle started to fit neatly together and the appointment of Sanchez proved redundant, the blueprint for the 2024 success was now laid. The McLaren DNA still survives, Zak is a McLaren man through and through. They now just have to learn how to fly again - success breeds success.

It wasnt the 2007 scandal, that brought McLaren to a decade long low, because if you look at it, the team was competitive to around 2012, so 5 years after the scandal. The problem was the structure that was proposed by Ron and executed by M.Whitmarsh, the infamous matrix structure. It was apparently in an attempt to reduce the power of Newey. And so he left and there was no accountability by other senior staff, they were able to shift blame to each other. It must have been a toxic enviorement that completelly numbed the performance of the team. We all remember what insiders were reporting about the treatement of staff (given chocolate bars as compensation) and senior staff just drinking coffe and laughing of things (Goss and co.) whilist the results on track were catastrophic. And then came Honda with its gp2 engine wich made things 10xtimes worse and even accelerated the decline to an ever bigger low. Thank god these times are behind us.

Zak really is the reason that things started to turn around and he is the saviour of the team. Rebuilding a team that lost its way as much as McLaren did is impressive and a project that took a couple of attempts and wasnt always easy. He was able to free the existing talent in the team while adding it.

Good times look to be ahead of us and i will enjoy every moment of it.

Hard to argue any of your points but I still maintain the scandal, resulting in a loss of face with Mercedes was a significant if not major factor. In those challenged economic times of F1 the loss of works engines and the close partnership led to a weakening. Also, by 2009 the cracks were evident with the team finishing a distant third. Anyway the recovery of 2023/24 looks very assured. Consistent competitiveness, ignore all the "dominant" and "fastest" descriptions. I don't discount the possibility that in this last quarter of the season coming, the team's understanding of the 38 platform and some upgrades that have been held back till now, we could see near dominance over most of the last 6 races. It's pretty exciting but talk of both championships is very premature.

[Emag]

Slightly off topic, but with the recently announced McLaren W1, I was wondering if McLaren has long term plans of perhaps buying out Ricardo (the engine manufacturer that makes the engines for their road cars).

McLaren’s road cars are actually quite decent power-wise so perhaps McLaren upper management could start pulling some strings to get Ricardo some experience in PU technology that is applicable to F1 and eventually form a works deal partnership with them that extends beyond the automotive business.

[billamend]

Slightly off topic, but with the recently announced McLaren W1, I was wondering if McLaren has long term plans of perhaps buying out Ricardo (the engine manufacturer that makes the engines for their road cars).

McLaren’s road cars are actually quite decent power-wise so perhaps McLaren upper management could start pulling some strings to get Ricardo some experience in PU technology that is applicable to F1 and eventually form a works deal partnership with them that extends beyond the automotive business.

I agree, specially if F1 indeed goes back to simpler engines as it is being promised for 2028 or 2032.

[mwillems]

Slightly off topic, but with the recently announced McLaren W1, I was wondering if McLaren has long term plans of perhaps buying out Ricardo (the engine manufacturer that makes the engines for their road cars).

McLaren’s road cars are actually quite decent power-wise so perhaps McLaren upper management could start pulling some strings to get Ricardo some experience in PU technology that is applicable to F1 and eventually form a works deal partnership with them that extends beyond the automotive business.

Mclaren Automotive made a near £1bn loss in 2023 so buyouts might be far from their mind for the foreseeable future. Though this question was asked of the team previously (A few years back) and the answer then was no.

The team, have done a deal with a major automotive company (Can't remember who) to do with the supply of electrical technology and power units, however.

[_cerber1]

The team, have done a deal with a major automotive company (Can't remember who) to do with the supply of electrical technology and power units, however.

BMW

[Craigy]

Slightly off topic, but with the recently announced McLaren W1, I was wondering if McLaren has long term plans of perhaps buying out Ricardo (the engine manufacturer that makes the engines for their road cars).

McLaren’s road cars are actually quite decent power-wise so perhaps McLaren upper management could start pulling some strings to get Ricardo some experience in PU technology that is applicable to F1 and eventually form a works deal partnership with them that extends beyond the automotive business.

I agree, specially if F1 indeed goes back to simpler engines as it is being promised for 2028 or 2032.

Ricardo's book value is about £400m. You'd probably have to stump up £600m to take it private, and it's not like McLaren is sloshing with money.