How far behind is McLaren ?

They are arriving late to the game - I would give them the first 10 races to sort
themselves out. By then if they are still midfield then they screwed up badly-IMO

 

Late? A year and a half when they had all the data about the Merc engine from McLaren? They were testing this new engine in last year's chassis a good 8 months ago.

 

Maybe there design is different so all the Merc data would only help a little

If I was doing an engine from scratch I would try to best the current players
not just copy especially since design is slowly going to be frozen over time - just saying

 

Let me put it in perspective. Last year, with the introduction of the turbos, it was a new engine/design for all the teams. Same thing for mclaren/Honda this year. I don't remember even the small teams having such a big reliability issues like mclaren has today. Having said that, I believe that mclaren will have a really bad season without any podium positions. My 2 c.

 

There were reliability issues at the start of last year, Hamilton and Vettel both didn't finish the first race for one.
2014 Australia = 13 finishers, not counting Bianchi who stopped 8 laps short but was still classified.
2014 Malaysia = 15 finishers

Before Australia some predictions were for even fewer finishers.

and those are out of 2 more starters than this year (Caterham)

 

I think someone let their ambitions get ahead of their talent. I drank the kool aid, though.....but their first year will be fairly ugly, IMO. Maybe I am underrating them like I did Ferrari late last year for 2015 results, but I don't see them getting any podiums this year.

 

Spot on Bob, use to be a time the Japanese not only copied but improved, this is a fail, but a good one as it impacts McLaren

 

I think McLaren are in a very precarious position.

Both Ferrari and McLaren faced very big internal ructions and poor performance last year. Ferrari moved forward with new blood. McLaren brought Ron back. The car Whitmarsh put on the grid in Australia came in 2nd and 3rd (ok a little flattering but it was clearly only one rung down from Mercedes with a few other teams).

Internally McLaren's shop still looks all over the place with a dinosaur at the helm. Sponsors are making their opinions clear with their $

Honda was never going to suddenly cure their performance problems with some godly super PU. People saw Honda's previous F1 turbo success along with their current engine prowess as somehow immediately pointing to immediate success in F1. As I said previously, their historical F1 turbo success was pretty much down to their ability to by-pass the FiA regulation testing regime. They were running way higher boost than allowed but got away with it. It's easy to have the fastest turbo when you're running 50% more boost. That was never going to happen under the current testing regime.

McLaren's options are simple to me. Firstly the real owners need to step in and clean the place out. First cab off the rank to go should be Ron. Then focus on being an F1 team, get a major sponsor. They need to work on the FiA to dump the constraining rules in F1. Finally, do the hard yakka with Honda and slowly improve their donk.

New people, hard work, new sponsor and perhaps a change of livery, back to the traditional orange to show they are back to being a pure F1 team.

 

But this has nothing to do with why McLaren's were painted yellow/orange.

BTW: Every time McLaren dabble in road cars their F1 performances taper off ...
Pete

 

What it's like is if Fiat removed LDM and Ferrari turned their fortunes around .... oh yeah

That will come as big news to Bruce McLaren's family and millions of Kiwis.

The car Whitmarsh left McLaren with scored 2 podiums in its first race. Everything since then under Dennis has gone backwards and downward, just like his car division. That's fact, plain and simple.

The Bahrainy owners have already shown they won't endlessly fund losses.

It's a mistake to think McLaren's problems all reside with the PU. Last year their car went from 2nd best Merc powered car to last of that lot.

As a Ferrari fan it was hard to go through the changes to our team last year. But it had paid off with the new blood already exceeding expectations.

As I said in my previous post, IMO, McLaren are in a very dangerous place, and need to take drastic action very soon.

 

Mate with this comment I have to wonder how long you have followed F1. Ferrari have won one race ... lets not get things out of perspective. The team is still Italian and can screw itself into a mess with politics in 5 seconds .

Some of us witnessed most of the 21 year drought and have ridden the ups and downs ... yep, we just experienced an up. Lets support them by all means, but we are a heck of a long way to go before we have a mini Schumacher period again.

Even the Alonso years Ferrari managed 3 wins (I think) and went into the last race of one season with a chance at the WDC ... but reading most of the posts here, Alonso was an @rsehole and useless. My point, the difference between a competitive F1 car and an uncompetitive F1 is not much ... milliseconds in fact, but those milliseconds are really hard to find.
Pete

 

10 wins, I think, and two "almosts". Still not enough anyway. I see too much euphoria: it was good to see Vettel winning his 2nd race with Ferrari but Alonso won at the first try and then everything got worse from then on.

About McLaren: they ran with the pack at Malaysia instead of two laps down like at Australia, their best lap was just a few tenths worse than Red Bull before their break downs, and their corner speed is very good. Not making excuses: their start of the season is being pathetic, but I see improvement and many reasons for optimism.

 

Some would say too many. I lived through every moment of those 21 lean years.

My comment was not motivated by the win. I can see clearly from the pre-season and the two races so far that the team is in a way better position. The demeanor of the team as much as the performance. The team has exceeded any expectations I had at the end of last year.

Screwing yourself isn't the exclusive domain of Italians

 

Most of this is true, however when Mayer took over, they were successful in the 70's under Fittipaldi and Hunt. 2 WDC's and a bunch of wins and they challenged Lotus and Ferrari. After '77 is when they really went downhill until 84-85 with Lauda and Prost.

 

I hadn't thought that McLaren wanted to produce the volume of cars of Ferrari, say 7,000ish or so now I believe. They have a handful of dealers in the US, so more would be better I'd say!

 

McLaren also helped changed the look of the Indy cars with their car based on the M25.

But it is a fact that when Ron Dennis took over it was really a case of Project 4 becoming the new McLaren with the same sponsorship. This all happened because Barnard and Ron had come up with the first carbon chassis, the MP4 ... I've just clicked that the P4 must mean "Project 4" ... but didn't have the funds to go further with it and McLaren (at that time) were lost and had good sponsorship from Malboro. This take over demonstrates how clever Ron is at these business type dealings.

It is a real shame that Bruce died when he did as McLaren would have become a serious force in the world of motorsport and car manufacture anyway as that was his plan and his team were already involved in many race series all over the world. The M6GT that he made was due to his goal of one day producing a road car. That is another car that I'd love to make/own ...
Pete

 

Every dog has his day and Ron's day has long passed.

 

+1

 

My point, the difference between a competitive F1 car and an uncompetitive F1 is not much ... milliseconds in fact, but those milliseconds are really hard to find.

This statement from Pete is reality, and couldn't be any truer!

I have been following F1 since 1965.

 

With all due respect, anyone who believes that is a fool IMO. (No offense intended! )

I'm certainly no fan of the boys from Woking in general or uncle Ron in particular, but anyone writing them off as 'past it' is going to be eating some serious crow. Almost certainly not this year, but in the words of the Governator, 'they'll be back'.

I don't think we know how good the car is - most race cars feel 'good' when driven at 8-9/10ths, which is about all they can do right now, but once Honda get their act together (which I'm sure they will) I'm sure they'll be back at the pointy end. And Ron will still be in charge.

Cheers,
Ian

 

+1. There is no hint at all RD is in trouble or that Honda will not be competitive. Ferrari were hardly a threat last year. We need Honda to be strong and keep F1 movingly!

 

They've struggled for the past 7 years to 'be back' with Mercedes engines/power units (and last year they failed to do anything at all with the most superior power unit on the grid!), so why are they somehow almost guaranteed to make a comeback with Honda power?

Lets not forget that despite all of Honda's engineering brilliance, their last foray into F1 resulted in them walking away from the sport having had no success whatsoever, and the car they left behind only came good when a Mercedes engine was shoe-horned into it!

David Coulthard made an interesting point about the McLaren based on what Jenson Button has been saying about it.

Basically Jenson said that the car felt very nice to drive, with good balance front and rear, and was a very calm place to be.

Coulthard said that whilst that was all very nice, in his experience, fast cars always feel a bit nervous, as though they're right on "the edge" of letting go, and that calmer cars tend to be that way because they're not performing anywhere near "the edge" (unless they just have a seriously poor chassis/set-up).

As I've already posted, Honda failed to get their act together with the comparatively simple 2.4 V8's, so why are they going to manage it now with even more complex power units?

I'm not saying that it won't happen, I'm just saying that history has shown that Honda don't always get it right, and they don't always succeed in F1!