McLaren will take risks
McLaren, once burned, does not fear boldness, is essentially the takeaway from the statements of Jonathan Neale, the general manager of the British team.
A revolutionary ride height control system at Lotus and Mercedes, an aggressive single-seater at Ferrari, and perhaps an innovative car at McLaren. This is at least what Jonathan Neale, managing director of the Woking team, suggested in an interview with our colleagues from Autosport.
« We are in a field where you have to take controlled risks. Formula 1 is not a business where you can afford to rest, at any time. If you do not maintain this relentless pressure on development, you regress. Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes, and ourselves are quite good at this level » he notes, before continuing: « You cannot be on the defensive. If you want to win races, you have to work hard. We will not be stingy with risks ».
Neale is careful not to make any predictions and prefers to draw from the past to explain the future: « For now, we know nothing about the competition. There will be different interpretations of the rules set by the FIA, as we saw at the start of the last season. Look at what Renault did. They had an innovative approach regarding the exhaust exits, and it was useful for them as they made it to the podium at the beginning of the year. » The forward-facing exhaust exit was hailed as a major and bold innovation at the start of the 2011 season, before causing real setup problems for the team at Enstone.
Jonathan Neale added that the team has learned lessons from its last season, which was full of ups and downs where it was unable to offer real resistance to Red Bull. Yet, it won six victories in China, Germany, and Abu Dhabi with Lewis Hamilton, and in Canada, Hungary, and Japan with Jenson Button. The latter even finished as the runner-up in the world championship, after consistently reaching the podiums in the second half of the season.
« If you look at the number of races McLaren has won over the last 10 or 15 years, we have won some every season. There were only three drivers with more than one victory in 2011, and two of them were our drivers. But we are just a little frustrated by this period without titles. Obviously, winning is the most important, but both races and championships. McLaren must fight for the championship every year ». The team’s last driver’s title dates back to 2008, with Hamilton, while the last constructors’ championship won was in 1998. In 2007, the team was leading the championship, but the espionage case led to their exclusion, awarding the title to Ferrari.
« Everything doesn’t always go well, and we stumbled because we took risks. Last year, we made mistakes and had reliability issues with the car, perhaps we were too radical on certain things and paid a high price for it. » While the 2011 season wasn’t particularly plagued by reliability issues (two retirements due to mechanical failure), McLaren experienced a significant development delay, due to its initial exhaust system – the « octopus » – which proved to be very inefficient. The team then made profound changes to its car just a few weeks before the Melbourne Grand Prix, reverting to a more conventional solution that turned out to be successful.
To conclude, Jonathan Neale confirmed that the MP4-27 would indeed be present in Jérez starting from February 7 and that it had passed all the FIA crash tests at the end of 2011.
