McLaren say there’s no problem with their process of car development despite having fallen further behind Ferrari and Red Bull during 2010.
Managing director Jonathan Neale answered questions from the F1 media including F1 Fanatic during a Vodafone McLaren Mercedes phone conference:
Lewis has said he would like Mark Webber to win the championship if he can’t and Jenson has said that if Fernando wins it could be seen as controversial in the wake of the team orders row. Do you have any preference, if Lewis doesn’t win the title, for who it does go to? And how do you assess the other three’s chances and their seasons?
I don’t have any preference and it’s great for Formula 1 that it gown down to the last race again. Obviously I read the press and I enjoy the sub-editors’ headlines enormously but I don’t take them particularly seriously. The speculation around who said what to whom is light entertainment and froth.
I think that Sebastian [Vettel] had a very strong first half of the year, then I think Mark [Webber] really dug in from about Silverstone onwards and has done a great job. Ferrari have come on strong with their car and I think Fernando [Alonso] is a fighter. I think the drivers that are in contention are worthy contenders. But I don’t really want to get drawn into public joy of tit-for-tat.
What do you think you would pinpoint as the reason why you lost out to Red Bull and Alonso and how are you going to approach changing that next year?
Red Bull have had a quick car since the beginning of the year. The number of one-twos they’ve pulled off has been impressive. Of course we can all look back at our seasons and pick the points where we either had poor reliability – we had some transmission issues – or where we’ve had collisions or incidents and think “there would have gone our championship”.
It’s very tempting to do that and we’ve done that for a number of years. The reality is that it’s a long season made up of lots of decisions, lots of things you do around upgrades, performance, lots of issues around reliability. Clearly we have to go back and look at how we did but we do that every year.
We’re in their fighting with Ferrari for the next place in the constructors’ championship, it’s valuable and we’re going to do that to the best of our ability at the weekend. And we’re going to treat this race like we do any other race, which is I’d like to win it. And that will be our objective.
But it’s not exactly as if the season has been a calamitous failure, it’s been a really close one all year and Vodafone McLaren Mercedes will refuse to give up until it’s over. We’re fighters and we’ll continue to do that.
Will you change your approach for next year or will things carry on much as they are?
We change all the time. Certainly we’ll go back and look at where we’d like to have made gains. But I wouldn’t say that we do that just at the last race, that’s a continuous process of evolution and I think that’s why Vodafone McLaren Mercedes in its current from and McLaren in its other forms, going back to the 1960s, continues to be a successful team and will continue to be a successful team. Constant, constant reflection. We’re certainly not complacent.
Can you confirm who McLaren will be running at the Abu Dhabi test next week and what do you hope to learn from the test?
We’re going to run Gary Paffet and Oliver Turvey. We’re going to benchmark where we are on the Bridgestone tyres and then we’re going to have a very good look at how much we can learn as quickly as possible about the Pirelli tyres. That’s our principal focus.
It seems that during the course of the year development on the car hasn’t been as successful as you would have liked. Is that far? And if so, what were the problems with it and why?
No I don’t think it is fair. I think it’s not been quick enough to overhaul the competition but I think that both Red Bull and Ferrari, and certainly in the first part of the season Mercedes as well, have all had strong upgrade paths, and on this occasion we didn’t quite get enough to get the job done. But I don’t say that there’s been a failure in our development system, it’s been a tough race all year.
Going back into the nineties there were times when you switched David [Coulthard] and Mika [Hakkinen] but, generally speaking, you’ve let your driers race. Looking back to 2007 you had Fernando and Lewis very close on points going into the final round and Kimi seemed a long way back at the time. But given the Red Bull position in Brazil and in this race, were you surprised that they haven’t prioritised Webber, given that Vettel still has a mountain to climb in Abu Dhabi?
To be honest I’m not that surprised, actually. I think they’ve had their challenges during the year and when you’ve got a car that’s very competitive and you’ve got two drivers, both of whom are good drivers, it’s a very easy thing to get wrong and it’s a very delicate balance as we all know. Not least of which is all of you are waiting for us to trip or slip or something and it makes great news!
I read the columns this morning, like you will have done, about what Dietrich has said, and I think we’re going to go out and let the guys race. The drivers know what’s stake, they’ll sort it out on the circuit. I think it’s going to be a really tough race and I can’t wait to get out their and watch it.
Going back to the question you answered before about the development, if you compare the way you finished last season, with the strength of development from summer onwards, it seems like there’s been a couple of occasions, like Suzuka, when you’ve brought something along that hasn’t worked, you’ve had a different F-duct for some races then gone back to the original one – it seems like it’s not been as confident or effective as last year. Is there a reason for that?
I think there’s a big difference between trying to nudge your way ahead of fierce competition, and coming back from oblivion when everybody has written you off. So I think the context is different, I don’t think the process is.
I also suspect that we are all used to seeing a lot testing and a lot more risk-taking which is what we’ve all had to do on Fridays. I’ve been interested to watch the pace of the cars develop with the teams who are continually changing the cars, trying to upgrade the cars, and some of the pace improvement that’s happened from cars where, at least publicly, they’ve said they’re not bringing any more upgrades.
We know that there’s a lot of performance to be found in car set-up but to get the car set up you need a reasonable stable car configuration. I think the challenge for all of us has been just how do you continue to develop the set-up. Teams that have stopped developing their cars are getting quicker because the race engineers and the drivers are learning to run what they’ve got.
At Brazil we saw the team giving Jenson and Lewis strategies which allowed them to get onto fresh tyres during the safety car period at the end of the race. But then, because of all the traffic, they weren’t able to take the fight to the cars in front of them. Would you say that F1 should bring back the rule that allows lapped cars to unlap themselves behind the safety car for the improvement of the show?
I think there’s a great danger – and Formula 1 is collectively guilty of – knee-jerk changes when something happens at a race. If you remember at the beginning of the year when we went to the first race there was speculation that the season might turn out to be a somewhat dull procession, when it’s been anything but that.
So I don’t think we should leap into changes just on the basis of Brazil. I think it adds to the spectacle. At the end of the day, if I detach myself from the fact that we had something to lose at that point and put myself in an armchair along with the fans, I think I want to see the quick drivers have to earn their money and come through, I think it’s just better for the spectacle.
What was the reasoning for getting rid of the rule in the first place, as you understand?
I don’t know, I can’t remember off the top of my head – I’ve got a head full of other things at the moment!
You said a few minutes ago that the team will be going to Abu Dhabi as normal to win the race. Obviously Lewis has got to win the race if he is to have any chance of winning the title. How confident are you that’s a realistic prospect – just winning the race.
I think it depends on your vantage point. If I knew what Red Bull were bringing I’d have a view, but I don’t, obviously they’ll be trying to bring out last-minute upgrades as we will and as Ferrari will.
I think rain is unlikely – you might agree with me on that but I could be proved wrong! – so it should be a conventional race in that sense.
I think reliability will play a big part in the weekend as well, getting to the end of the season people are taking risks. It could be hot, dry, dusty, it’s going to be close.
2010 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
Electrolite
10th November 2010, 13:35
Mclaren have always had upgrades throughout the whole season and have been aggressive, if not the most aggressive out of the whole grid in this respect. It seems to me like the base of the car itself they got slightly wrong, perhaps balance-wise, not as bad as Mercedes did this year though.
VXR
10th November 2010, 13:41
McLaren, as we saw last season, have the ability to make a silk purse out of a sows ear. Very few teams can do that.
Electrolite
10th November 2010, 14:02
Ha! Never heard that saying, that’s brilliant.
sumedh
10th November 2010, 16:05
Love that idiom. Amazing!!
Part of the attraction of following a British website. People here have an incredible command over the English language.
DeadManWoking
10th November 2010, 16:13
“You can’t make a Silk Purse out of a Sow’s Ear.”
Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745)
Feynman
10th November 2010, 22:47
I think we need a proper re-appraisal of 2009.
If you listen to TV idiot pundits, it was the most remarkable and sustained development program ever witnessed to turn a donkey into a race-winner.
Is that really the case though?
a) first of all their development/design process suspect, such that it took them down such a blind-alley in the first place.
b) the remedy was the outwash front wing. All the old-school engineers from other teams had clocked exactly what was wrong with the McLaren as soon as they saw it.
There was no sustained development miracle, they bolted on the ‘correct’ front wing in Germany and all the deficit disappeared.
I do not believe the hype about McLaren engineering and management prowess, I think they got it badly wrong last year, failed to develop this year (at a rate anywhere near comensurate with their available resource), too many updates have failed, had to be adjusted, didn’t cycle fast enough, other teams made upgrades that stuck to the car.
Arguably they haven’t produced anything approaching a dominant car for years, last constructors title when?
Management culture and engineering process need a proper root-and-branch looking at to identifiy root-cause(s) of current malaise.
I get the feeling there are way too many people way too comfortable with their feet under the table in the MTC, expensive and shiny tables. Needs a shake-up and a clear-out.
BasCB
10th November 2010, 16:15
I would largely agree with what Neal says about the upgrades.
Last year about everything they could throw at the car would be an improvement and bring them a lot closer to the front.
In 2010 the car was good and was being measured with the excellent RB6 and the Ferrari (developed for 2/3 of 2009). Thus developments would not be as big improvements and there was less progress up the field to gain.
I also feel, that McLarens progress last year fired everyone up to an amazing level of improvement during the year, just look at the sheer amount of front wing improvements from Renault.
And I would say that apart from RBR, who had an advantage to start with and still lost a bit of its advantage during stages this year, everyone had ups and downs. Just think back at the Ferrari F-duct.
enka
10th November 2010, 13:51
so it is their plan to be no. 3 on the grid?
Xenon2
10th November 2010, 14:24
I don’t think McLaren maximised the rear diffuser as well as Red Bull and Ferrari. They also seem to have gone for an opposite strategy on weight distribution: very good on high fuel not so good in qualifying, on low fuel.
JT19 (@jt19)
11th November 2010, 4:42
totally agree with you. i think adding the Exhaust Blown Diffuser, it made the car in the wet not very good (that’s how i think of it). Everyone were mostly thinking McLaren were going to attack the front at Korea, but i put my excuse down to that EBD
DaveW
10th November 2010, 14:30
“I think it depends on your vantage point.”
Why doesn’t he just say “no.” It just so poignant to see him defending their development path and then later admitting that, for the last race of the season, they have a car with which Lewis Hamilton can’t realistically hope to win. Last year, lest we forget, Hamilton came to Abu Dhabi with a car to win and just might have but for a brake pad failure. This year, not so much.
Alex Bkk
10th November 2010, 15:09
I think the lack of testing has hurt Macca as much as Ferrari… They are both used to testing testing and then some more testing.
During the season when you upgrade, you have to make a call “this is as good as it’s it going to get for us” because the upgrades have to be manufactured and delivered by a particular race.
Macca was brilliant with the F-duct… but it could it also be that the initial design of the car is hampering the upgrades? It could be the chain of command because someone has to make a decision on which parts to run.
The RB has been lethal all season and the Ferrari has been catching them slowly. Macca is just getting something wrong as much as Ferrari and RB are getting it right. They have 2 WDC’s piloting their cars… My finger points to management.
Icthyes (@icthyes)
10th November 2010, 18:44
I think he assumes that because McLaren do things to their cars that make them worse, so will the others.
Cacarella
10th November 2010, 15:21
Mclaren don’t need to worry about losing the second spot in the WCC, Ferrari are effectively only racing with one car. (I’ll take the opportunity any chance I get) ;)
He’s obviously not going to say that their development team got it terribly wrong this year but I’d be nice if he was a little more honest rather than using the ‘We’re not slow, the competition is just faster’ line.
Cacarella
10th November 2010, 15:22
Should read ‘IT would be nice’
innim
10th November 2010, 16:14
If i remember rightly, mclaren are 42? points ahead of ferrari. Thus, even if ferrari get a one-two (which in itself is unlikely) they need mclaren to either finish 10th-11th or lower. Not impossible, but still unlikely.
Dave
10th November 2010, 16:25
Mclaren 421
ferrari 389
32 points ahead.
DeadManWoking
10th November 2010, 16:29
It’s 421-389=32 points, but that’s still insurmountable with a 1 car team!
VXR
10th November 2010, 16:30
Well, they chose to be a one car team.
Gill
11th November 2010, 3:53
Really….. who is stopping Massa to race against everyone sans Alonso.
Be a realist and then think that its coz of Massa, Ferrai arent 2nd in the constructors.
VXR
10th November 2010, 16:29
Just like Alice, I try to think of at least six impossible things before breakfast. :)
curedcat
10th November 2010, 16:37
mclaren need 2 stop giving excuses and hold thier hands up . Admit that they didn’t match the brains at RB and ferrari . Mclaren hyped thier upgrades more than any other team . And whitmarsh never stops reminding us of what mclaren achieved in d past . How can a team be that aggressive and not be able to make decent leaps in lap times .
Mclaren’s development hit the roof after they introduced the EDB . All the races prior to silverstone , mclaren was either matching RB , or outpacing them on race day . Will mclaren have beaten RB had they not copied the EDB ?. Dunno .
Younger Hamilton
12th November 2010, 0:20
McLaren always have problems with DOWNFORCE!!! every freaking time they say they lack downforcwe and they make the F-duct a downforce reduction device.McLaren, start thinking of ideas TO INCREASE DOWNFORCE on cars for 2011 not things like F-duct.
Rocky
10th November 2010, 16:45
At every new race the complaint was always not enough down force! RBR had this flex wing thing legal or not it did the job.
David BR
10th November 2010, 17:48
Hamilton has observed before that the car has lacked enough downforce ever since he arrived in the McLaren F1 team. You’d have thought they’d have paid some attention to him. I think the lesson should be clear to the team: they need to develop the car 100% around Hamilton. Compromising for Jenson next year will put them at a serious disadvantage when Ferrari will build the car around Alonso, Red Bull around Vettel, and maybe Renault around Kubica (incidentally maybe the same applies to Mercedes’s failure to back Rosberg fully and cater for Schumacher).
Jeffrey Powell
10th November 2010, 19:06
Its a shame that the modern F1 car can be said to suit a certain driver and give another a disadvantage. You will notice that the slower driver berates his car and pines for a car that suits his finer driving style.Poor Lewis eventually this rubbish from his teammate and M.W. may work.Jenson may think he’s akin to Alain Prost and talk his way into joint position in the team , Mclaren would be better of with Trulli at least he could qualify up with Lewis.
tharris19
10th November 2010, 22:59
I want to see how Mclaren are approaching the design and development of the MP4-26. The car should be ready within a the next six weeks. When it rolls out for winter testing I plan to watch the drivers response to the car and Whitmarsh response to the drivers. That will speak volumes about what will be happening at McLaren next year and maybe beyond.
David BR
11th November 2010, 11:53
Well I think another duff and/or compromised car and Hamilton will be out of there. And I suspect that’s what McLaren will deliver. Too much corporate polish and not enough edge and creativity.
MercedesBeanz
10th November 2010, 18:50
I said once I’ll say it again: In their front wing, Red Bull are using some sort of SMA enmeshed composite. A current is sent through the mesh heating up the epoxy resin matrix, at the same time the SMA mesh can be made to exapand/contract thus flexing the wing, either as a reaction to external load or to a predetermined angle..
Think of muscle fiber. with agonist and antagonist behavior.
Mr. Wrong
10th November 2010, 17:09
Nice interview.
I wish Mr. Neale was a bit more forthcoming with much needed auto criticism, after this is the 11th season they have failed to win the WCC.
Something is clearly lacking and it is not their drivers ability, thus they should look elsewhere for answers, preferably not in other team’s design documentation.
DeadManWoking
10th November 2010, 17:13
It’s the 12th, they last won the WCC in 1998.
bosyber
11th November 2010, 7:56
To be fair to their development, they would have won it in 2007 if it hadn’t been for politics.
Oliver
10th November 2010, 17:13
Mclaren have become very big and the same goes for its design department. Granted they are able to come up with some innovative thinking every now and then, F-duct, but consistently they have often followed and evolutionary trail rather than a revolutionary .
This is most evident from the design of their cars. It is hard to spot much difference between the car of today and one of 5years ago, of course regulation changes aside.
Quite often they have chosen conservative routes to car designs than taking any radical route. It is for this reason that Adrian Newey chose to leave the team. He felt his design ability was being curtailed by the bureaucratic atmosphere within the organisation.
Icthyes (@icthyes)
10th November 2010, 18:00
Ignoring how the EBD destabilised the car at low speeds, the development hasn’t been the problem. It’s the fundamental design that has been. In current F1 it’s no good being good on the straights if you are poor on the slow corners and bumps and McLaren have been third-best since Day 1 in this area.
At least it’s nice to see they’re not the McLaren of 1997 that wanted to do all they could to stop Ferrari from winning. I have a hunch Hamilton’s support of Webber has a tough of deliberate irony in it ;)
BBT
10th November 2010, 19:17
Totally agree… espec’ the EBD and the fundamental design.
VXR
10th November 2010, 19:23
Ironic yes. But given the situation where Webber is way out in front, Alonso is second, but some way back, Hamilton is in 3rd and is catching Alonso and has that look of a driver who doesn’t really give a toss…..
Alex Bkk
11th November 2010, 11:34
Ditto @ Icthyes
Byron R
10th November 2010, 19:06
It’s possible flexi floors affected McLaren the most of all. Leaving them with more of a performance gap when compared to RB and Ferrari
Bullfrog
10th November 2010, 19:13
Ironic now in’t it that their ability to develop the car was one of the main thing that attracted Jenson Button to McLaren. I wonder if JB saw what was coming at Brawn (i.e. Mercedes’ struggles with this year’s car). If he did it’s a measure of the man that he never admitted it in public.
Agree with him about backmarkers. The best drivers will find a way past – the others should go away this winter and watch some old Senna videos!
VXR
10th November 2010, 19:33
Interesting to hear that McLaren got their “fundamental design” all wrong again, despite Hamilton saying on numerous occasions that it’s been the best car he’s ever driven….hmmmm.
It is a very good car, it’s just not as good as some others. Same old same old.
Dave
10th November 2010, 19:46
to be fair, they kind of ” won it” in 2007 but was disqualified. Alonso and Hamilton scored more points than Raikkonen and Massa.
Cacarella (@cacarella)
10th November 2010, 20:29
You can only kind of “won it” if it hasn’t been proven that you stole designs from one of your rivals. Otherwise you kinda won nothing.
bosyber
11th November 2010, 8:00
They used the info to stop Ferrari’s flex-tray, but for the rest I doubt they used it in their own car much. If anything, it allowed Alonso/de la Rosa to experiment with better setup from the Ferrari data on Bridgestone tires, and maybe they modified their suspension a bit (maybe they should have tried that this year :-p)
tharris19
10th November 2010, 22:42
The “neutral car” (MP4-25) as discribed by Paddy Lowe, turned out to be development proof. They could not get the aero or mechanical grip to work all year. Every effort, upgrade, setup, etc., turned into a flop because the car was not sensitive to change.
Mr Neal and Mr Whitmarsh can say what they please, but, people saw the car and could compare its performance matrixs to it’s competitors. RBR and Ferrari improved while McLaren did not. Mr Whitmarsh and the drivers were often enthusiastic about new parts and changes to the car, raising the hopes of their fans, only to be let down during qualifying and the race.
David BR
11th November 2010, 0:24
Yep, it seemed like they were continually trying to upgrade a brick.
You get the impression McLaren don’t see the wood for the trees sometimes – focused on something fixed and difficult to develop much further like the F-duct but not thinking about the overall adaptability of the car, ready to incorporate ideas from other changes or – who knows! – have some of their own. Underwhelming.
bosyber
11th November 2010, 8:08
I still find the MP4/25 a very interesting car. I like that they tried something different, not like Ferrari, a halfway adaptation of the RB5 to their F60. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Ferrari’s choice wasn’t in the end proven to be faster, but I think that beating RBR at their own game won’t work, so Ferrari will have a hard time being really faster than Red Bull this way.
Trying something different at least might have had the potential to beat RBR – and did at times, but RBR are just too good at their game with current rules, and McLaren seem to not have had enough of their own improvement ideas to avoid having to adapt that “their own thing” car to incorporate RB6 features, like the blown diffuser, which ended up not working as well with their car as it did with the partly RB-inspired F10.
Icthyes (@icthyes)
11th November 2010, 10:19
The real worry for McLaren is if it’s true that the Pirellis will induce even more understeer. They’ve already had trouble with the narrower front tyres and the fundamental car design. If they keep going in this direction they won’t even compete next year.
Patrickl (@patrickl)
12th November 2010, 8:25
I does look like McLaren did the same as Ferrari did for Raikkonen in 2008. They took the car in the wrong direction and lost out.
If you hear Lewis and Button, the car is eating it’s tyres and can only be competitive for a few laps. After that it’s undriveable. They just can’t seem to get it fixed. maybe going back to the old setup would have been better. It helped Mercedes this year and it helped Raikkonen in 2008 (he was fastest again with the old setup from Spa onwards).