OPINION> Matthew Marsh
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OPINION> Matthew Marsh
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McLaren upbeat
By Matthew Marsh (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-25 20:21 Despite being beaten to the chequered flag on Sunday, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes are happy. They have performed an incredible turnaround in performance in a season which the team's managing director, Jonathan Neale, refers to as having "the biggest regulation changes in 20 years". These prescribed a shift from grip delivered via aerodynamic downforce to that provided by the tires. The aim was to increase overtaking and - with five winners from 11 races so far - it seems to have worked.
What did not work was McLaren's 2009 car, the MP4-24, which team chiefs have admitted was almost certainly the slowest in the field at the season's start. Much of the reason for that rested with McLaren's focus on propelling Lewis Hamilton to his maiden drivers' championship triumph last year while other teams effectively gave up the chase and began putting a huge amount of resource into preparing new cars for this season. This also meant other teams were more adventurous with the new regulations than McLaren could afford to be - witness the contentious "double" diffusers introduced by the Brawn, Williams and Toyota teams at the start of this year. McLaren's main problem was a lack of downforce. They made up about half of their 2.5 seconds per lap deficit before the season opener in Melbourne and Hamilton's fourth-place finish there was repeated at round four in Bahrain. But the rush to find short-term improvements meant not investing wind-tunnel time on major updates. The result was that other teams came to the Spanish Grand Prix in early May with bigger improvements and Hamilton finished a lowly ninth - one lap down. The team needed to step back in order to go forward, with fundamental changes to weight distribution required alongside continued aerodynamic improvement. The focal point became round nine: the German Grand Prix - which had the added pressure of being Mercedes-Benz's home race. McLaren's aero department was told to cut out all non-priority tasks and the manufacturing team broadly cut in half its time to market on most items by duplicating tooling and working around the clock.
Team bosses introduced a programme called "Don't Put Down" in which workers were expected to forego breaks until a task was finished. In addition, with in-season testing prohibited, the team had to employ a highly-disciplined procedure at each Grand Prix's Friday practise sessions to evaluate new parts. Hamilton qualified an encouraging fifth in Germany with teammate Heikki Kovalainen alongside but over-ambition at the first corner cost the world champion any chance of a good finish and Kovalainen was eighth. However, two weeks later, on July 26 at the Hungarian Grand Prix, Hamilton was dominant. This win was also notable for being the first by a car using a Kinetic Energy Recovery System - an innovation encouraged by the 2009 regulations. McLaren refused to let their momentum be interrupted by the two-week holiday enforced on all the teams ahead of last weekend's European Grand Prix. Many of the 500 staff at team headquarters in Woking, England, stayed on the case until midnight on the Sunday of the Hungarian race - only after that could they enjoy a well-earned vacation. In Valencia last weekend McLarens locked out the front row in qualifying and finished a strong second and fourth, proving they are now firmly among the frontrunners. It has been an amazing effort by hundreds of people and underlines the fact that while drivers get the glory, F1 is, first and foremost, a team sport. mmarsh@ecuriedrapeaujaune.com |
