I have no idea whether this is still the case, though if it is then my God you have to admire their increase in consistency: All their engines are shit now
I’m unsure what McLaren can do about it, other than hang on in there with Honda and grind it out.
Neither Mercedes nor Ferrari will be prepared to give McLaren top spec engines on a customer deal. Renault are clearly happy to supply a customer (Red Bull) with a top spec engine, though whether they can or will supply the same spec to McLaren I have no idea. I suspect Dietrich Mateschitz might have a thought or two about that though.
A new manufacturer is clearly not an option as – proved by Honda - the lead-time to having a decent motor is tremendous, and had any ‘skunk works’ programme – say VAG, Cosworth, BMW - been taking place we’d have heard whipsers – and noticed staff going missing - before now.
All of which, IMHO, rather misses the point: would bolting a Merc engine into the back of the McLaren make it a top car? Almost certainly not – it’s a long time since they built something approaching a top car, despite whatever GPS data they trump out at the end of this week’s test saying that theirs is the best car through sector 3 and therefore a classy chassis let down by a bag of bolts in the back.
Good post Craig, and at the end of the day Mac must accept all the responsibility for their current predicament. Blaming Honda doesn’t cut it in my opinion.
You’ll notice that since Mac have had a road car business, their F1 fortunes have taken a downturn, whether that’s just a coincidence, is difficult to say. But their failure to take the engine build in-house with a close partner, has eventually cost them big in the long term… imo.
Never seemed to hurt Ferrari having an in-house engine (…though I struggle to recall a time in recent years when they had the ‘best’ engine.)
I think McLarens best hope of an in house engine disappeared with the passing of Cusworth’s F1 programme three or so years ago. And even then I’m not sure it ever made that much sense: they’re assessment of requiring a manufacturer was not necessarily wrong, their choice of manufacturer, however, was. As Ian has said for years
McLaren have their own technical leadership problems, which as Craig has explained,they cover up by blaming the powerplant. Not sure if I used the term on here, but someone I worked with for many years described McLaren as having an intellectual arrogance. And that must be adding to their current problems. A few really good people left them and they were the people that made the team really work and not the group full of intellectual arrogance.
Tomorrow’s chip-paper is saying that Mario Illen has stopped working at Renault now - perhaps he’ll be the next consultant to end up banging his head against the Honda wall
