Lando Norris, McLaren, Baku City Circuit, 2019

McLaren “starting the journey to recovery” – Brown

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In the round-up: McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown says the team is beginning its journey to recovery now, having seen its performance deteriorate during last season.

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What they say

I think the team’s done an excellent job over the winter, and that’s everybody. Clearly we’ve built a better race car this year, the drivers are doing an excellent job, we’re pleased with the driver line-up.

So it feels like we’re starting the journey to recovery. Last year we were talking more about the start of the road to recovery but by the end of the year [it] felt like we we’re less competitive than the start of the year, where now it feels like we’ve started in a more competitive situation. It’s nice to kind of rebound from China qualifying to have a strong qualifying [in Azerbaijan].

[There’s] still a long way to go but pleased with all the hard work everyone’s doing.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Comment of the day

Codemasters F1 2019
Codemasters F1 2019
Should Codemasters strip away the non-racing aspects of F1 2019?

The biggest no-no for me is that they are focusing too much with the sideshow than racing. If they want to present management, then make a manager game separately of the racing game. I don’t care for answering the questions of journalists and things like that.

Instead of this, they should focus more on the damage models, parts failing and so on.

And I must say that replacing of driver pictures with their CGI images looks catastrophically cheap and on par with games from a decade ago. Less of those animated nonsense would be great.
@Proteus

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32 comments on “McLaren “starting the journey to recovery” – Brown”

  1. I don’t know what the COTD is referring to with the “sideshow” bit. The only place with sideshow is the career. And if you want the career to not have sideshow, then you can just make a championship, or a series of championships.
    What Codemasters really need to focus on is fixing their hangup-ridden engine, their absolutely horrid AI (even if it is basically the best AI in single-player racing, from what I’ve seen), and allow us to choose what things Jeff says. I don’t want to hear about how my turbo is getting tired and I should keep mileage off of it, while I’m racing for position in Monaco. Shut. Up. Jeff.

    1. Let alone the fact that you can’t *not* keep mileage off said turbo. Pointless message during driving.

      I’m driving for Renault but I’m pretty sure I’ve got Ferrari’s strategist. The alternate strategies are always worse.

      On the strategic change options – Jeff should tell me *why* and where I’ll come out so I don’t have to pause and try and figure it out myself. Engineer shouldn’t just be a crappy Siri substitute.

      1. I’m driving for Renault but I’m pretty sure I’ve got Ferrari’s strategist

        @justrhysism – that’s like throwing snake eyes :)

  2. Agree with the CoTD. There’s so much more work to do than adding peripheral fluff. They still have a big climb to pull this animated series out of the uncanny valley.

  3. Regarding the Hankook wet tyres… did F1 dodge a puddle by sticking (at the correct temp) with Pirelli?

  4. Regarding the W series, I’ll copy/paste what I wrote elsewhere…

    I thought the W series commentary was poor, Graphics were a bit meh & the directing was really inconsistent but the racing in general wasn’t too bad.

    Still not totally convinced that the series is a positive overall though. Think it would have been better to put resources into a way of encouraging girls to get into karting & then helping to fund opportunities in the existing junior categories for the one’s who look like they have the talent to do well. If you want women in Motorsport to be taken more seriously & given more opportunities then the best way of doing it is to show that they can race with & beat the best talent at any given level & I just worry that pushing them into a female only series that is never going to have the overall depth of talent as the junior categories around it isn’t going to help.

    1. Lee H (@stopitrawr)
      5th May 2019, 10:38

      I’m sorry but you are aware you can do both of these things. Also Chadwick has been beating men her entire racing career.

      If this is a stepping stone for her to get into F2 and beyond, and show girls that they have a pathway as well.

      If the current system actually encouraged girls to get involved, there would be no need for this series. The system is broken and this can be a way to tip the balance a bit.

      It’s not perfect but it’s frankly required.

      1. @stopitrawr I get that but my concern is what happens if somebody is clearly steps ahead of everyone else in the W series only to then go upto the next level & struggle around at the back. If that happens it does nothing to help anybody & makes the W series in general look poor in terms of it’s depth of talent.

        What W series is trying to encourage is great but I just don’t think the concept is the right way to do it.

        1. @stefmeister So, they shouldn’t bother trying at all then?

          How about letting them have a crack first before suggesting such things.

      2. LB (@burden93)
        5th May 2019, 14:12

        I agree, Chadwick absolutely smashed it and if this can be the platform for her to make F2 and then maybe F1, then that triumph alone would make the series worth it. Getting 1 woman to F1 would hopefully see a change in perception, give more women currently in motorsport a better chance and inspire more girls to get into motorsport.

      3. @stopitrawr You can only spend a pound once, and I’m not seeing any evidence that this is likely to improve anyone’s prospects of getting into “mainline” series. If anything, I’m left wondering if the talk of W Series damaged Jamie Chadwick’s chances of a DTM drive this year (something that some people have parlayed into a F1 drive). Certainly if the money spent on the series had been put into her, this would have been feasible.

        I have been left with the impression that W Series makes a broken system even more broken, and is an expression of part of the problem rather than a solution.

  5. How many years has McLaren been “starting the journey to recovery” for now?

    1. @flatdarkmars – I have been very critical of McLaren in the recent past, but I will admit that until this point in the current season, they are impressing me. They’ve dropped the arrogance of “challenging for podiums and wins”, and are instead delivering actual results better than I expected. As a Renault customer, they also seem to be doing better than the works team, despite the latter having two highly regarded drivers (or one, for those who don’t buy into the Hulk hype).

      Based on that performance, I’d like to see if McLaren can win the midfield battle this season or the next. And if so, unlike most of the midfield, they have the financial resources to actually target the big three. If those are their near and medium term goals and if those can be achieved in the most part, then that’s good news for us F1 fans.

      1. @phylyp Same here. I share the same sentiments about Mclaren with you.

    2. @flatdarkmars Year 6 of year 1 of the 3-year strategy, I think. I am hopeful this will not become “Year 7” in 2020.

  6. Since 1966.

  7. I don’t necessarily agree with the COTD. I don’t have and haven’t had a problem with answering some questions in my career mode. It’s only a small portion of it after all.

    I found the interview by Martin Brundle to Seb very interesting listening. BTW, it was filmed before the last race based on some of the words there.

  8. Mr Vettel we are in 100% agreement Sir.
    I also cannot understand this weird obsession with following someone’s every move.
    Being interested in a celebrity to the point where you read articles, buy biographies, posters etc etc is perfectly understandable. Checking social media constantly throughout the day about them though sounds more like a mental illness to me.

    1. I wouldn’t go so far as to criticize it, personally speaking. Like you, I’m not a social media person, but I’ll concede that there are different strokes for different folks, and leave it at that.

      That snippet from the article was very interesting to read – because these few years we’ve had two multiple WDC champions, and they have a diametrically opposite mentality and approach to social media, and it is definitely nice to see that variety at play.

  9. Couldn’t disagree more with the cotd, the recent refocusing of career mode into having more off the track interest has made it a lot more fun for me. I think it’s a great trend that can be seen across many successful sports video games. I simply hope they make it better and take it further. For example let us manage our “brand”, decide what to post on social media to potentially gain fans and have that be a selling point when signing for new teams. Decide how much time to spend doing various activities between weekends, training to improve handling further, simulator work to get more/better feedback from the engineer during testing, doing team events/functions to gain brownie points with the team, maybe relaxing and time off could even give “flashback” opportunities during the race. Things like that. They could also include in-game “financial” rewards from getting bigger contracts and doing extra media events during the season and have that currency unlock new livery and fashion options.

    The possibilities are endless and the more the merrier as long as it actually has a good purpose in the game design, of course it would take time to develop alongside the yearly updates but I’d love to see more in that direction in the future.

    1. LB (@burden93)
      5th May 2019, 14:07

      I really agree with this. I think the career should be the game mode where you get to live the life of an F1 driver and everything it brings with it. There are plenty of other game modes where you can do race after race.

    2. I like these ideas, especially if you can turn options on and off at will. Sometimes I’d want the full experience, sometimes I’d want to focus on a few things and put the rest on “autopilot”, and some people would prefer “just the racing and maybe a favourite off-track element” at all times.

  10. Watched the w-series and overall it was very good.
    Whatever tyres they were using were brilliant, make you realise just how much of a clown tyre F1 is using. No DRS passes were also good to see, I did not realise how much DRS sucks, although I do understand that without it there will be 90% less passes in F1.
    Only complaint would be the champagne bottles were ridiculously small and the female presenter overusing the phrase “ever so”.

    1. LB (@burden93)
      5th May 2019, 14:03

      I wonder if its the reduced downforce that makes it easier to get close and overtake, but agree there was more action in the 30 minutes of that race than an hour and half F1 race, overall a really great race. Yeah, no idea why the champagne bottles were so small!

      1. @burden93 It’s a support race to DTM, and it wouldn’t do to upstage the DTM…

  11. The FPV Drone shot at the corner in the WEC video was very spectacular!

  12. LB (@burden93)
    5th May 2019, 13:58

    I really enjoyed watching the W-Series race yesterday, Jamie Chadwick absolutely smashed it. Racing was really good, super close fights, 4 wide in corners at some points and just the one accident on a drying track. Only thing is I think they should stop the time when there’s a safety car as reduces the racing time a lot when only a 30 minutes race. Hopefully the series will be the platform needed to make a change at the top.

    1. @burden93 If W Series was a headliner event, the option to stop the clock for a Safety Car might have existed. However, it was a support round for DTM (and will be for every race this year), so they’d be required to hand the track back to the main series at a set time if at all possible. Having a predictable endtime for the race (in this case, time plus 1 lap) helps with this.

      1. LB (@burden93)
        6th May 2019, 16:27

        Ah I didn’t realise this. That makes sense now, thanks :-)

  13. Panagiotis Papatheodorou (@panagiotism-papatheodorou)
    5th May 2019, 14:17

    McLaren has been so great far. They were unfortunate in China, they had the 4th best race pace. In Bahrain, Saint went toe to toe with Verstappen, but was unlucky. They have really recovered this year, and I am looking forward to even better results in the future. They should invest in Sainz and Norris, they are young and they can build a championship winning team in the longterm. They also have there resources.

  14. Alonso is on the way the to win WEC title as a rookie. He has 31 point lead with only 39 points on offer for winner of next race. Had he not been disqualified from Silverstone win his lead would have been larger. Lets hope he gets a fair shot at Indy 500 this month.

Comments are closed.