Vodafone McLaren Mercedes 2013

[Richard]

It's not as black and white as saying Button is a liar or not. That's a very strong word and ignores the reality that life has shades of grey. The teams put a positive spin on everything, its how they earn their sponsorship funds.

As you said, its a mixture of many "sucky things". Button saying he wants a car that is more/less under/oversteery in the winter is probably only a small "sucky thing" compared to the fundamental errors in the design of this car. Perhaps his feedback during the season isn't the best, but the guilty party when it comes to a fundamental lack of downforce must surely be the design team?

Note this is the same team that a few years ago went from best car on the grid to dead duck the following season. It is remarkable that a team could fall on their face twice in a matter of 5 years. Drivers come and go, but the same design team made the same mistake.

[turbof1]

Exactly. The biggest difference with 2009 is that back then there was more then enough potentional to turn performance around, even if the car remained faulty at its core. But these cars are a culmination of 5 years of development; there is very little to develop anymore, and structural weaknesses can't be compensated anymore.

It's interesting though:
-Although the 2009 was a bad car until they turned it around, the 2010 car was an evolution from it (so they said). Now the 2010 car was a title contender (very unfortunate mclaren couldn't keep it together towards the end of the season).

-The 2012 car, the car that should have won the championship, was a conservative approach and pretty much based on the 2011 car. The 2011 car started out as a very flawed car, (mclaren lucked out of it because the platform suited the red bull EBD in a very fortunate turn of events).

The way I see it, mclaren is very able between seasons to evolve bad cars into excellent cars. If given the time, they eventually find the flaws, remove them, and use the strengths of the old platform to design a good machine. However, they also look like having problems when they depart from evolving the car and go for a clean sheet.

[Pup]

...but the guilty party when it comes to a fundamental lack of downforce must surely be the design team?

Or those who manage them.

For years now, the McLarens seem to have been little more than a kit of parts - collections of intriguing and innovative designs which rarely coalesce into anything greater than the parts. (And when they do, we now learn, it happens by chance.)

I suspect this has more to do with their organizational structure than it does with the talents of the individual engineers or drivers; and I think this is why other teams seem to do a better job with McLaren's innovations than McLaren themselves.

That is to say, I blame Whitmarsh. I like him - he seems smart and ambitious and driven, while somehow remaining likable - but I think his matrix management system combined with his laissez-faire style has left the team without a unified vision that guides the design of the parts.

Maybe Morris can fix that.

[beelsebob]

...but the guilty party when it comes to a fundamental lack of downforce must surely be the design team?

Or those who manage them.

For years now, the McLarens seem to have been little more than a kit of parts - collections of intriguing and innovative designs which rarely coalesce into anything greater than the parts. (And when they do, we now learn, it happens by chance.)

I suspect this has more to do with their organizational structure than it does with the talents of the individual engineers or drivers; and I think this is why other teams seem to do a better job with McLaren's innovations than McLaren themselves.

I suspect it has more to do with the fact that they have a bunch of engineers working at an incredibly fine grain on an already incredibly hard problem, which is incredibly difficult to model accurately. When you're working on problems that no one on the planet knows the solution to, the solution comes by chance every single time. You then proceed to understand why that solution works, and start working on trying to find the next part of the solution, again, by chance.

You give far too much credit to the effect a manager can or can't have when you suggest that McLaren's car being slow is down to managers/structure, not engineers.

Not only that, but they're not even being that unsuccessful. Over the past 4 years they've built the fastest car once, the second fastest car twice, and a dud once. That's the same hit rate as the team on the grid who produce the most winning cars... Oh wait, that's them . The point is, their hit rate is not dropping in recent years. The team is doing an excellent job. They may have produced a dud this year, but they always will from time to time.

[Pup]

You give far too much credit to the effect a manager can or can't have when you suggest that McLaren's car being slow is down to managers/structure, not engineers.

Bad management can be devastating to a complex project. That's been proven so many times that it's simply not up for debate.

Over the past 4 years they've built the fastest car once, the second fastest car twice, and a dud once.

They've built the second fastest once, and the third fastest twice. And this one. Over the last ten years, they've only had the fastest car once, and that one was illegal. Over that same period, they built 3 stonking duds. McLaren are a good team, but lets not put blinders on. They've got a problem that has outlasted a parade of drivers and engineers. The one constant through that and the one thing that most of the issues they've had points to - from strategy cockups to schizophrenic designs to retention problems to driver issues - is management.

[turbof1]

They had the fastest car last year, but due mismanagement failed to extract the performance out of it.

I agree with Pup. Last year was a prime example of why management failed. It wasn't just one department failing, but almost all the departments. failed pit stops, failed to put enough fuel in, mechanical break downs, too late with bringing updates,... . The operational part of the team failed over the complete board. That's too much to be coincedence or a mechanic not doing his work; that points at management failing at its job.

The issue most of all is that they are too soft. Whitmarsh should have been axed last year. Producing a bad car is serious, but producing a car capable of winning the championship but failing to materialise, that is unforgiving. And on top of that, they decide to dump such a good platform in favor of a new radical design. Red Bull has been winning with cars that orginated from the RB5. They constantly found improvements. Mclaren ignored that example. And such decisions only belong to the top of the team.

[Emerson.F]

They had the fastest car last year, but due mismanagement failed to extract the performance out of it.

I agree with Pup. Last year was a prime example of why management failed. It wasn't just one department failing, but almost all the departments. failed pit stops, failed to put enough fuel in, mechanical break downs, too late with bringing updates,... . The operational part of the team failed over the complete board. That's too much to be coincedence or a mechanic not doing his work; that points at management failing at its job.

The issue most of all is that they are too soft. Whitmarsh should have been axed last year. Producing a bad car is serious, but producing a car capable of winning the championship but failing to materialise, that is unforgiving. And on top of that, they decide to dump such a good platform in favor of a new radical design. Red Bull has been winning with cars that orginated from the RB5. They constantly found improvements. Mclaren ignored that example. And such decisions only belong to the top of the team.

I second that. Redbull seems too find even more performance every year without totally redesigning their car.
IMO it also has to do with JB's input into this car. At the time they made it he was the only driver giving inputs and driving it in the Simulator. Apparently he led them true a dark alley like Canada 2012. That is the best example of his inability too set up a car. So who knows what this car is capable of. Last year he could rely on the setups from the other side of the garage. Look where that got em..

I mean come'on this is the guy that said the Mp27 was the worst car he has had at Mclaren and then at the start of the season tells the world he had great input into this years car. Checo arrived very late into the developement of the Mp28, so he has had zero input into the car. Jb on the other hand has had full input.

[Pup]

They had the fastest car last year, but due mismanagement failed to extract the performance out of it.

Well, the car that crosses the finish line first is the fastest. The reason why it doesn't - be it bad aero, bad pit stops, bad driving, or bad reliability - is really irrelevant, since each of those things are but elements of the primary problem, which is how to get to the top step on the podium. That's why I think that McLaren don't have a car problem, they have a winning problem; and why I think this year's car is just this year's symptom, and the underlying disease is systemic.

[beelsebob]

They had the fastest car last year, but due mismanagement failed to extract the performance out of it.

Well, the car that crosses the finish line first is the fastest. The reason why it doesn't - be it bad aero, bad pit stops, bad driving, or bad reliability - is really irrelevant

Bullshit, a pit stop is not a feature of the car, not is a driver, these are features of the team. It's entirely possible to have the fastest car but not win in it.

[turbof1]

It is the way you measure "being fastest". I personally look at what it potentionally can bring to the circuit, which speed is inherent to the car. What pup described I would call "being the fastest team".

But for everything else, he is right: these mistakes are all symptoms of a bigger problem, higher up the ladder.

[Pup]

a pit stop is not a feature of the car, not is a driver, these are features of the team. It's entirely possible to have the fastest car but not win in it.

I just look at the problem holistically - when you're talking about the success of a team, you can't look at one quick car and say 'see, everything is peachy" - especially if they were unable to capitalize on that advantage. Besides, to the specific issue of last year's car, it was the fastest for the first few races, then stagnated, then improved, then stagnated, then finally fast again. But since they didn't know why the car got improved toward the end of the season, I find it hard to give them credit for making so.

[turbof1]

you can't look at one quick car and say 'see, everything is peachy"

Nor are we. It's the contrary actually: having all those errors with a bad car wouldn't have been such a drama because the potentional was never there anyway. But having a car that lost out on winning 3 races because the team failed to do its job properly, that is a deadsin.

I personally believe its the one of the reasons why paddy lowe left. I would do the same when such a good car gets such badly threatment.

[Pup]

I think all 3 of us are saying the same thing, just getting caught up in semantics.

[turbof1]

I think all 3 of us are saying the same thing, just getting caught up in semantics.

Hence why they sometimes call this forum "f1semantical" .

I absolutely have no idea why nobody got axed at mclaren. In most other sports the "coach" gets fired when results aren't coming. The same thing would happen in a profit-organisation when a CEO fails to get to the target goals. Mclaren is loosing out on both the sporting and the financial side (they will get way less royalties then last year with their current position). just standing there staring and hoping things will get better will not solve the issues.

[Richard]

It's that time of year when we need our traditional "Silly Season" thread to avoid multiple team threads talking about the same thing. We usually try to keep the team threads to discussion of this team, this season.

Silly season chat this way http://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewto ... ead#unread