| By Ben Anderson | |
| Grand Prix Editor | |
This surely cannot be allowed to go on much longer. McLaren is meant to be a top Formula 1 team, a perpetual championship challenger, a winning force - not a mediocre midfielder operating on a big team's budget.
For an outfit that is statistically ranked the second most successful in F1's history, behind only Enzo Ferrari's great Maranello empire, McLaren's recent record is utterly abysmal.
Its current winless run stretches back four straight seasons and 78 races. That is worse than its post-Ayrton Senna malaise of 1994-96, and comfortably outstrips the barren spell of 1978-1981 (53 races) that marked McLaren's pre-Ron Dennis nadir.
How long can the lands of its Woking headquarters endure such drought before they become scorched forever? Formula 1 expects better than this from McLaren. McLaren expects better than this from itself. Something has got to give, and soon.
McLaren has taken steps to address this slump: making significant changes to its technical personnel and working culture, swapping customer Mercedes engines for a works Honda partnership, signing a double world champion in Fernando Alonso, and more recently pushing a new broom through its boardroom that has swept power away from Dennis's hands.
McLaren has changed a lot during the past four years, but so far that change has not added up to success on track.
Honda is McLaren's big gamble that is yet to pay off. There was much fanfare when this great alliance reformed ahead of the 2015 season, with talk of its proud winning history and new 'size zero' innovations - teeny, tiny components that were meant to deliver big performance.
Except they didn't. Honda's first V6 hybrid turbo engine was woeful, as the Japanese manufacturer admitted underestimating the challenge posed by the regulations, and it arrived underprepared.
The result was McLaren's worst constructors' championship finish since 1980: ninth, ahead of only the minnow Marussia outfit that barely made it onto the grid that year.
Last season was much better, as Honda redesigned its Energy Recovery Systems to make its power unit more efficient. The upshot was a marked improvement on 2015, but still only enough for McLaren to climb to sixth in the standings, with not even a sniff of a podium finish.
Honda recognises the incredible difficulty of extracting more horsepower from the V6 combustion engines in this formula, without reducing the effectiveness of the ERS. At the end of last season, Honda's F1 chief Yusuke Hasegawa spoke of the need to understand and develop complicated lean combustion ignition technology so Honda could take the next step.
Honda has redesigned its engine for 2017, and is expected to follow the layout favoured by Mercedes - splitting the turbine and compressor and placing them at opposite ends of the V-bank of the engine.
Previously Honda ran a split system within the V-bank, which led to components being too small and ineffective. Increasing the size of these components within the V-bank in 2016 made them too heavy and raised the car's centre of gravity, which contributed to handling problems with the chassis.
Two years in, an alliance that reformed on the basis of innovating to beat its competition looks as though it is retreating into conformity - if you can't beat 'em, join 'em?
"Regarding the MGU-H and turbine layout, I don't know how every [engine] was made precisely, but [the Honda] is very similar [to the Mercedes concept], because it is a reasonable layout of packaging," says Hasegawa, who estimates Honda has revamped "90%" of its power unit for 2017.
"For the turbo ignition system - I cannot disclose information about technology of course - but we learned about that, and I heard some other teams are doing that. I think we are finding a very good solution to extract the power."
Honda will need to, because Autosport understands it was trailing Mercedes by around 60kw (around 80bhp) in the latter part of last season. There are rumblings within McLaren that Honda has yet to find any additional power as it battles to get its new engine concept clicking into gear, but at the launch of the new MCL32 Hasegawa said he expects Honda to reach Mercedes' 2016 levels of power come the start of the season in Australia.
To reach Mercedes' 2016 level would be an impressive achievement for Honda given its late start under these rules compared to rival manufacturers. But Mercedes is likely to remain out of Honda's reach if it has indeed made the "unprecedented" step with its own new design predicted by customer squad Force India.
This begs the question: why did McLaren not persist with Mercedes customer power in hope of beating the works team by developing a better chassis, rather than suffering such sustained growing pains with Honda, which may never catch Mercedes under these rules?
"Sometimes it is better to take a step backwards to move forward," argues McLaren racing director Eric Boullier. "Integration is key when you are a works team, because you can design your engine and your chassis and take into consideration both needs.
"If you want to move a wastegate, if you want to move your turbo, they [Honda] will do it. If you are a customer team you have a box that is delivered on a Thursday night, and you have to deal with that. If your idea is to design the car differently you can't.
"Being a customer of Mercedes would never allow us to win the championship, but Honda we believe is right partner to go there. Ninth in 2015, sixth in 2016; if we keep doing the same progress we will be back where we should be sooner rather than later."
Honda tends to take the brunt of blame for McLaren's present plight, but the team has also been guilty of creating its own problems as it battles to overcome the power and weight deficit imposed by the engine. Last year's MP4-31 was strong on the brakes and at low-speed, but lacked grip in medium and high-speed corners, and required all the driving talent of two proven world champions to keep it pointing in the right direction.
This exposed McLaren brutally at Honda's home race in Japan. The team undertook a special body of work to correct this weakness for 2017, and expects no repeat.
That aside, McLaren is encouraged by general progress made in conceiving and developing its three most recent Formula 1 cars (2015-17). With ex-Red Bull aero wizard Peter Prodromou making himself heard as the team's engineering chief, development correlation between factory and circuit is now pushing 95% according to Boullier, having been down in the 60s previously.
The focus has shifted towards consistent and usable downforce, rather than peak figures, as well as fostering a culture of honesty and accountability on the team's failings, and an emphasis on real-world track data rather than an over-reliance on simulation.
"We are much more agile, leaner, flexible," says Boullier. "We go straight to the point - I'm used to saying 'no bullshit'. We use the track as a reference, we don't go through different bypasses like the windtunnel, or whatever. Track is our reference, so the correlation is much easier when you regroup into your simulation process."
Boullier says enhanced accuracy in McLaren's development tools will be crucial in 2017, given the greater potential for aerodynamic progress presented by the new regulations, and the need to react to what he calls the "moving target" of the developing Honda power unit: "That's the way we will make our way through the field and back to the front."
2017 offers the chance for the emperor to sport new clothes, and McLaren's car certainly does, featuring a new nomenclature and orange flecked livery that appears to mark a clean break with its recent Dennis past. The major shareholders have signed off on an increased budget for this season (just as well given the dearth of sponsor decals on the MCL32), and McLaren is also relishing the prospect of trying to exploit regulations that it helped draft in the first instance.
"I expect we will close the gap to the top teams," is Boullier's confident prediction.
McLaren really needs to hit the ground running in testing this week. The team won't publicly set targets, for fear they will be hung like millstones around the necks of its employees, but COO Jonathan Neale previously stated McLaren would feel "disappointed with fourth" in the constructors' championship, which really has to be the minimum target for a team with works engine status and a good budget - given Renault is still at least a year away from getting its own works revival properly into gear.
At the very least McLaren needs significant improvement. Privately, the expectation is to challenge for podiums again, before mounting a proper title assault in 2018. What we don't know is if star driver Alonso will stick around to see that plan come to fruition.
His deal runs out at the end of this season, and ahead of the last campaign Boullier said the Spaniard would be "foolish" to not extend the original three-year contract he signed after leaving Ferrari in 2014.
Alonso will likely have to if he wants to be the driver who makes McLaren-Honda a winner again. He says he won't consider his future beyond this season until August's summer break, but he reaffirmed his commitment to the "best team of my career" when Mercedes' new world champion Nico Rosberg vacated F1's best seat in December.
That loyalty may be stretched to its limits if there is not significant progress in 2017 - notwithstanding Alonso's own desire to see Formula 1 become challenging enough for drivers again to maintain his interest.
As F1 remakes itself anew this year, there is a real feeling of renewal about McLaren - a new driver in Stoffel Vandoorne, a new livery, a new chassis name, a new engine, all under new management, as the team embarks on the first foray of its post-Dennis era.
Dennis was responsible for transforming McLaren into a mighty winning force after a period of decline. It will be down to those who remain to perform a similar trick this time around, and ensure that a new-look McLaren doesn't end up delivering the same old results.
This drought has already gone on for far too long.
| By Ben Anderson | |
| Grand Prix Editor | |
This surely cannot be allowed to go on much longer. McLaren is meant to be a top Formula 1 team, a perpetual championship challenger, a winning force - not a mediocre midfielder operating on a big team's budget.
For an outfit that is statistically ranked the second most successful in F1's history, behind only Enzo Ferrari's great Maranello empire, McLaren's recent record is utterly abysmal.
Its current winless run stretches back four straight seasons and 78 races. That is worse than its post-Ayrton Senna malaise of 1994-96, and comfortably outstrips the barren spell of 1978-1981 (53 races) that marked McLaren's pre-Ron Dennis nadir.
How long can the lands of its Woking headquarters endure such drought before they become scorched forever? Formula 1 expects better than this from McLaren. McLaren expects better than this from itself. Something has got to give, and soon.
McLaren has taken steps to address this slump: making significant changes to its technical personnel and working culture, swapping customer Mercedes engines for a works Honda partnership, signing a double world champion in Fernando Alonso, and more recently pushing a new broom through its boardroom that has swept power away from Dennis's hands.
McLaren has changed a lot during the past four years, but so far that change has not added up to success on track.
Honda is McLaren's big gamble that is yet to pay off. There was much fanfare when this great alliance reformed ahead of the 2015 season, with talk of its proud winning history and new 'size zero' innovations - teeny, tiny components that were meant to deliver big performance.
Except they didn't. Honda's first V6 hybrid turbo engine was woeful, as the Japanese manufacturer admitted underestimating the challenge posed by the regulations, and it arrived underprepared.
The result was McLaren's worst constructors' championship finish since 1980: ninth, ahead of only the minnow Marussia outfit that barely made it onto the grid that year.
Last season was much better, as Honda redesigned its Energy Recovery Systems to make its power unit more efficient. The upshot was a marked improvement on 2015, but still only enough for McLaren to climb to sixth in the standings, with not even a sniff of a podium finish.
Honda recognises the incredible difficulty of extracting more horsepower from the V6 combustion engines in this formula, without reducing the effectiveness of the ERS. At the end of last season, Honda's F1 chief Yusuke Hasegawa spoke of the need to understand and develop complicated lean combustion ignition technology so Honda could take the next step.
Honda has redesigned its engine for 2017, and is expected to follow the layout favoured by Mercedes - splitting the turbine and compressor and placing them at opposite ends of the V-bank of the engine.
Previously Honda ran a split system within the V-bank, which led to components being too small and ineffective. Increasing the size of these components within the V-bank in 2016 made them too heavy and raised the car's centre of gravity, which contributed to handling problems with the chassis.
Two years in, an alliance that reformed on the basis of innovating to beat its competition looks as though it is retreating into conformity - if you can't beat 'em, join 'em?
"Regarding the MGU-H and turbine layout, I don't know how every [engine] was made precisely, but [the Honda] is very similar [to the Mercedes concept], because it is a reasonable layout of packaging," says Hasegawa, who estimates Honda has revamped "90%" of its power unit for 2017.
"For the turbo ignition system - I cannot disclose information about technology of course - but we learned about that, and I heard some other teams are doing that. I think we are finding a very good solution to extract the power."
Honda will need to, because Autosport understands it was trailing Mercedes by around 60kw (around 80bhp) in the latter part of last season. There are rumblings within McLaren that Honda has yet to find any additional power as it battles to get its new engine concept clicking into gear, but at the launch of the new MCL32 Hasegawa said he expects Honda to reach Mercedes' 2016 levels of power come the start of the season in Australia.
To reach Mercedes' 2016 level would be an impressive achievement for Honda given its late start under these rules compared to rival manufacturers. But Mercedes is likely to remain out of Honda's reach if it has indeed made the "unprecedented" step with its own new design predicted by customer squad Force India.
This begs the question: why did McLaren not persist with Mercedes customer power in hope of beating the works team by developing a better chassis, rather than suffering such sustained growing pains with Honda, which may never catch Mercedes under these rules?
"Sometimes it is better to take a step backwards to move forward," argues McLaren racing director Eric Boullier. "Integration is key when you are a works team, because you can design your engine and your chassis and take into consideration both needs.
"If you want to move a wastegate, if you want to move your turbo, they [Honda] will do it. If you are a customer team you have a box that is delivered on a Thursday night, and you have to deal with that. If your idea is to design the car differently you can't.
"Being a customer of Mercedes would never allow us to win the championship, but Honda we believe is right partner to go there. Ninth in 2015, sixth in 2016; if we keep doing the same progress we will be back where we should be sooner rather than later."
Honda tends to take the brunt of blame for McLaren's present plight, but the team has also been guilty of creating its own problems as it battles to overcome the power and weight deficit imposed by the engine. Last year's MP4-31 was strong on the brakes and at low-speed, but lacked grip in medium and high-speed corners, and required all the driving talent of two proven world champions to keep it pointing in the right direction.
This exposed McLaren brutally at Honda's home race in Japan. The team undertook a special body of work to correct this weakness for 2017, and expects no repeat.
That aside, McLaren is encouraged by general progress made in conceiving and developing its three most recent Formula 1 cars (2015-17). With ex-Red Bull aero wizard Peter Prodromou making himself heard as the team's engineering chief, development correlation between factory and circuit is now pushing 95% according to Boullier, having been down in the 60s previously.
The focus has shifted towards consistent and usable downforce, rather than peak figures, as well as fostering a culture of honesty and accountability on the team's failings, and an emphasis on real-world track data rather than an over-reliance on simulation.
"We are much more agile, leaner, flexible," says Boullier. "We go straight to the point - I'm used to saying 'no bullshit'. We use the track as a reference, we don't go through different bypasses like the windtunnel, or whatever. Track is our reference, so the correlation is much easier when you regroup into your simulation process."
Boullier says enhanced accuracy in McLaren's development tools will be crucial in 2017, given the greater potential for aerodynamic progress presented by the new regulations, and the need to react to what he calls the "moving target" of the developing Honda power unit: "That's the way we will make our way through the field and back to the front."
2017 offers the chance for the emperor to sport new clothes, and McLaren's car certainly does, featuring a new nomenclature and orange flecked livery that appears to mark a clean break with its recent Dennis past. The major shareholders have signed off on an increased budget for this season (just as well given the dearth of sponsor decals on the MCL32), and McLaren is also relishing the prospect of trying to exploit regulations that it helped draft in the first instance.
"I expect we will close the gap to the top teams," is Boullier's confident prediction.
McLaren really needs to hit the ground running in testing this week. The team won't publicly set targets, for fear they will be hung like millstones around the necks of its employees, but COO Jonathan Neale previously stated McLaren would feel "disappointed with fourth" in the constructors' championship, which really has to be the minimum target for a team with works engine status and a good budget - given Renault is still at least a year away from getting its own works revival properly into gear.
At the very least McLaren needs significant improvement. Privately, the expectation is to challenge for podiums again, before mounting a proper title assault in 2018. What we don't know is if star driver Alonso will stick around to see that plan come to fruition.
His deal runs out at the end of this season, and ahead of the last campaign Boullier said the Spaniard would be "foolish" to not extend the original three-year contract he signed after leaving Ferrari in 2014.
Alonso will likely have to if he wants to be the driver who makes McLaren-Honda a winner again. He says he won't consider his future beyond this season until August's summer break, but he reaffirmed his commitment to the "best team of my career" when Mercedes' new world champion Nico Rosberg vacated F1's best seat in December.
That loyalty may be stretched to its limits if there is not significant progress in 2017 - notwithstanding Alonso's own desire to see Formula 1 become challenging enough for drivers again to maintain his interest.
As F1 remakes itself anew this year, there is a real feeling of renewal about McLaren - a new driver in Stoffel Vandoorne, a new livery, a new chassis name, a new engine, all under new management, as the team embarks on the first foray of its post-Dennis era.
Dennis was responsible for transforming McLaren into a mighty winning force after a period of decline. It will be down to those who remain to perform a similar trick this time around, and ensure that a new-look McLaren doesn't end up delivering the same old results.
This drought has already gone on for far too long.
