Back in the day, whenever a ship encountered terrible weather, and it seemed like it was about to sink, the crew would start tossing valuables into the sea in a last ditch effort to stay afloat. The McLaren F1 team finds itself in a similar situation. Anyone who began following F1 in the last 2-3 years would feel like McLaren is a minnow in F1. That is the furthest thing from the truth as the team is one of the powerhouses of the F1 world and considered part of the big five along with Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, and Williams.
They have an impressive history with drivers like Ayrton Senna just one of the racing legends that have steered a Mclaren car. McLaren has won multiple championships in the past. Even now, the team has Fernando Alonso, one of the all-time greats and yet they are not even the strongest team in the midfield. It is sometimes heartbreaking to watch Alonso and his McLaren being waved a blue flag. Both deserve so much better.
Things couldn’t keep going like this as the team has shareholders and sponsors to answer to. A lot of personnel changes have taken place, but the recent resignation of Eric Boullier has been the biggest of such changes since the unceremonious departure of Ron Dennis. So how did Mclaren find itself in such a pathetic situation?
<b>The entire Honda debacle: </b>The Honda partnership between 2015 to 2017 was plagued by a chain of retirements and poor race pace. After every significant failure, fans and anyone else who cared to listen were assured by McLaren and especially by Boullier that it was all down to the engine and that their chassis was the best in the field. So, when the partnership with Honda ended, people were waiting for McLaren to make significant Unfortunately, the improvements were only marginal. This seemed to indicate that McLaren’s woes went beyond the shortcomings of their engine supplier. The development came as a surprise to the F1 community and more importantly the sponsors and shareholders. McLaren seemed like a team that was either embellishing details or was unaware of its own flaws.
<b>Promoted too soon:</b> Boullier’s meteoric rise in the world of F1 has been somewhat of an anomaly. He achieved his high position in under a decade, and while this is not necessarily a bad thing, it did leave him quite inexperienced and underequipped when he was thrown feet first into a major crisis. Boullier came into prominence during the 2012 season when he was the team principal at Lotus with Kimi Raikkonen delivering a great season on his return to Formula 1. The problem behind going from being the team principal at Lotus to the race director of McLaren in just two years was that these two were vastly different teams. Lotus was a small team run admirably like an efficient ship by James Allison. Boullier appeared unprepared to lead a team like McLaren. This meant that he often turned up at press conferences without a clear sense of what was going on. Mistakes were brushed aside as insignificant, and claims such as the aforementioned “best chassis” were made without any concrete evidence. Boullier’s management style slanted more towards masking the team’s mistakes than admitting shortfalls and finding solutions.
<b>The failing technical structure:</b> If we analyze the whole back and forth that took place between Honda and McLaren, we can see that there was a clear lack of communication between the two. McLaren produced a ‘zero’ chassis that put constraints on the engine design and handicapped it from the very beginning. McLaren criticized the engine development approach for them lagging behind, but it was McLaren’s responsibility to ensure that Honda approached this the right way. After all, it was McLaren who had been competing in F1 while Honda was returning after a long time.
While the debate can go on forever that it wasn’t all Boullier’s fault and that he has been chosen as the fall guy, the fact remains that as team director, it was up to him to arrest the decline of McLaren.
<b>Freddogate – The final nail in the coffin:</b> When reports of “Freddogate”, wherein McLaren employees where being given Freddo chocolate bars to keep them motivated emerged, the F1 world was shocked and most even refused to believe that such a thing was happening at one of the biggest teams in F1. While Boullier defended himself to the end and denied ever using such a tactic, his words seemed to tell a different story. He was talking about internal strife and miscommunications in a manner that made it sound like he was an outside spectator.
What it means for McLaren and if it is the right call?
Many might still argue that Boullier has been the innocent victim in all of this and that his hands were tied by the bureaucratic maze he had to navigate at McLaren. The counter-argument to that is perhaps he should never have accepted the job in the first place as his F1 experience at Lotus was very limited.
For McLaren, all this seems too little too late. The 2018 season looks like a lost cause, and they seem to be on the verge of losing their star driver, Fernando Alonso. While Boullier’s departure is a step in the right direction, McLaren cannot repeat the mistakes of the past. The entire organization should work towards the common goal of returning to its past glory.
