Hey Sir I, They did manage with a prancing lion, although unsuccessfully. I do like the thought of McLaren-Ferrari,a new chapter in F1 lore.
The Peugeot! What a pile of junk that was! I reckon lasting peace in the Middle East or flying pigs are more likely! Cheers, Ian
Even if successful, Honda will pull away after a while anyway, because that's what manufacturers do. Their shareholders are looking a profits, and not F1 laurels. They look after their own interest, from a commercial point of view and are not hardcore supporters of the championship. Teams like McLaren however are in F1 because it's the purpose of their existence, just like Williams, the Enstone team (whoever owns it at any time), Manor, Sauber, etc... Genuine teams have spell of unsuccesful years sometimes, but sail through them looking for better time, because they have nowhere else to go. Renault, Honda or Mercedes can pack up at any time without looking back. Look at Toyota, Ford, or BMW ...
Re a Ferrari-engined McLaren. Among the talks about cost reduction, the idea of all the teams sharing a commong engine has been mentioned.Just like a common chassis. Each team would howver retain the right to put its own badge. So, even Ferrari could end up with a powerplant make in ... Germany? or England perhaps ? Unless, of course, Maranello wisn the bid to supply the whole field. People may ponder about that eventuality ....
Gotcha. If McLaren go through a restructure (starting at the top) they could be successful and within 5 years. Until they go through a restructure I don't think their make of PU will make much difference.
Never going to happen in a Trillion years! The engine/power unit is the heart of an F1 car and too personal to each manufacturer for them to be prepared to just put their badge on an engine that they never had any part whatsoever in manufacturing or building, and that is especially true of Ferrari. Ferrari put their badge on a Mercedes/Renault or Honda engine? They'd walk away from F1 rather than agree to that - guaranteed!
Interesting...... I guess you think it's time for Uncle Ron to move along? As is well known, I'm not a fan, but neither am I sure he's the "problem". Care to expand on why you (appear) to be saying so? I find it interesting that many claim the Mclaren car is "pretty good", but it's the PU that's letting 'em down. I dunno, but; - It's "easy" for the car to look "good" when it's 2 seconds off the pace! - Is it off the pace because it's crap, or, more likely IMO, the PU is crap right now. I'm not sure how removing Ron will change very much TBH. Other than checking that all the spanners are aligned correctly, I don't think he has much to do with any of it anymore; FPiloto's main man, Peter Prodromou seems to be getting on with it, and we know he's pretty good & they've always been a strong engineering outfit. I'll stick with my comment that Honda will get their act together by 2018,19. Not before. They have recently announced they're using some tokens ahead of Spa, so maybe they'll surprise us all..... Cheers, Ian
Honda will come good eventually. Mclaren have a good chassis IMHO but the lump has been a complete clusterf. The gap will close but as far as late 80s type dominance that I do not see happening IMHO.
Yep, it's time for Ron to go. Time for a new leadership and direction. There are plenty of cases where leaders with past success have failed to see and navigate the next success - sometimes right under their own nose.
Eddie Jordan has also suggested that Ron should stand down recently (Ron's response was: "Every village has it's idiot!" ) Jenson Button described the car as being nicely balanced, very settled and an easy, relaxed car to drive, and that it was just lacking a bit of power and reliability. David Coulthard was a bit troubled by the "easy, relaxed car to drive" part as he said that in his experience, that's the sign of a car that is far from performing anywhere near as it should do. He said that all of the really fast cars that he has ever driven have been on the edge and quite hard to drive because they're always pushing the performance to the absolute limit. He said: "If you're that comfortable and relaxed in the car then you're nowhere near where you should be performance wise!"
This poll is turning out pretty interesting. Can't recall such a close 'race' between all three options.
Interesting article in the "F1 Racing" magazine (June 2015, #219) about Alonso and his move to McLaren Honda. While I have found errors in other articles what Alonso is reported as saying makes perfect sense and the move was right for him. A couple of interesting things: 1. Ferrari promised him Adrian Newey, Pat Symonds, Andy Cowell (Mercedes engine boss) and none of this happened. 2. Allison of course tried to make him stay AND so many with the silly comments about Allison and Kimi being tight forget that Allison and Alonso have won 2 WDC's together when they were at Renault ... so obviously the Alonso and Allison pairing is more effective than the Kimi and Allison pairing. 3. Alonso has also stated that he thinks with the Lotus that Allison "designed" he would have had a good chance at the WDC ... so yes he rates Allison highly. So like a lot of drivers at Ferrari, bad timing and 5 years of frustration of nearly there but not quite with Ferrari loosing his trust over promising much and not being able to deliver. He did not want to continue to come second, and that is all that Vettel this year (at least) can hope for and possibly all they can achieve until Mercedes retire from F1??. Pete
A couple of things to note: 1) Every man and his dog, including Alonso and Ferrari, knows that Adrian Newey would never go to Ferrari as he gets far more pleasure out of beating them with other teams, so statements of Ferrari promising Alonso that Newey would join the Scuderia are a complete nonsense IMO! 2) As for not wanting to continue to come second any more, well he's well a truly sorted that one out! Who wants to come second when you can fight for 14th or 15th place in the WDC? Alonso took a massive gamble on going back to McLaren in the hope that they might surprise the whole of the F1 World with Honda power and hit the ground running, taking the fight to Mercedes, but instead, it's backfired on him big time! He's putting on a brave face saying that it's a long term project for the future, but with Honda cutting their noses off to spite their face by refusing to seek outside help, he knows there's a good chance that this gamble will never pay off, and as he's shown with Ferrari, when the going gets tough - He walks away!
IMO FIA wants big manufacturers in F1 hence behind the scenes they helped Merc get a leg up Strictly speculation on my part the same is gonna happen for Honda come 2017 rules
Tough is the wrong word. He got fed up with the broken promises. Not the first person to give up on Ferrari ... put yourself in your shoes and with the team trying hard to keep you with silly promises over and over. It would be frustrating, wouldn't it. Lets wait and see Pete
