Pup wrote:Well, one hard pill that most us McLaren fans have had to swallow is that the team just isn't the king of car development anymore. The reason, I suspect, is that they were probably affected more than anyone else by the resource restriction agreement. But then that goes back to management, evidenced by the fact that other teams seem to be able to get updates out fairly regularly, even with limited resources. Whether the problem has been decision making, design, or actually getting parts produced, is anyone's guess; but regardless of the specific reason for the paralysis, it all falls under the category of management. Whitmarsh's background was in building Harrier jets; and indeed, his McLaren seemed as ponderous as the aircraft industry. His way seemed to work when he had unlimited resources, but today's F1 needs more of a skunkworks approach, imo.
The good news is that Boullier has been probably the best on the grid the past few years at getting a lot done with very little, so we'll see if that talent scales when, in fact, he has a lot. I'm going to guess that skill had a lot to do with Ron's choice in hiring him. Today's McLaren is still mostly Whitmarsh's McLaren. Some things surely have changed, but other changes will take a while to happen.
I think Mclaren is inferiour only to Red Bull in developing the car during the season. Last year it was an exception, because they could not manage the pull rod and could not set up the car. The direction of the development paths led to nowhere. But even with this baseline, remember that they switched all the resources towards mp4-29 since the end of June 2013, and despite the limited resources left for mp4-28, towards the end of 2013, they closed most of the gap with Mercedes and Ferrari (compared how big was the gap in the first half of the year).
But remember 2011 and 2012, Mclaren was very good at developing the car. In 2012 after a little slump, after July 2012, the car went only better and better and only Newey's doble DRS and flexi nose prevented Mclaren from a total domination of the second half of the year. Remember how dominant was the car in the last three races of the year: pole position in Abu-Dhaby and lost the victory because of the gearbox faillure when Hamilton was leading the race, victory over Vettel in U.S and than first row and victory in Brazil. In 2011, after all the lost time with octopus exhaust they fixed the car in record time, and they had the second fastest car after Red Bull a king of the blow diffuser.
I think that Mclaren will have a strong development race. They have the money (100 millions extra from Honda) but their facilities in MTC will make de difference. Can't wait for Australia. At least we should be ahead of the Ferrari
It's perfect for them that people think that Mercedes is the fastest car.
, but I can't think that under Ron's eyes, something like this can happen. I think that your 3 theory is the correct one. They found something either good or bad. Neale said in January that they are discovering new thing in the wind tunnel every week, so I think that the cause. But I have another theory, that they may want to keep their cards close to the chest until Qualifying Session in Australia [-o<
