Has McLaren gone for a year in hell?

Facts : McLaren suffered its worst start to the season in F1 for a long time with a 14th and a 15th place for Daniel Ricciardo et Lando Norris in the night of Sakhir (Bahrain). More than the raw result, it is the glaring performance deficit which leaves the fans and even the staff at the head of the British team without answer. “We are behind and it is very complicated to understand what exactly we are suffering from,” recognized Team Principal Andreas Seidl.

YES, by Medhi Casaurang-Vergez

Forget the Coué method of Zak Brown, specialist in “Just do it” marketing. The slogan he constantly advocates, “Fearlessly Forward” has taken a hit because the McLaren is not moving as quickly as expected! During winter testing, initial concerns focused on the effectiveness and reliability of the brakes. However, this element is only one tree in the forest of problems encountered by the eight-time Manufacturers' champion team.

As highlighted by the record of the times on the Sakhir track broadcast on an English forum and which is making the rounds on social networks, Lando Norris was around 3 seconds behind the winner. Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) on the average of 57 laps. Of course, the Englishman started the race on hard tires and in the peloton, while the Ferrari had a clear track most of the time, but the delay was constant from the start to the end of the event.

In red, Norris' times, in blue Leclerc's times.

With a long history of more than six decades in the discipline, McLaren has already suffered serious relegations. You just have to go back to the period 2015-2017 and the traumatic memories based on “GP2 Engine” resurface. Then in partnership with Honda, McLaren wanted to rekindle the flame of the golden era between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. The Ayrton Senna-duelAlain Prost, victories and coronations in spades, McLaren and Honda outrageously dominated their subject.

However, the return of the Japanese engine manufacturer has led to a dark impasse. An unreliable engine lagging behind in development compared to Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault cost them dearly and pushed them to the bottom of the rankings. But, even worse, the McLaren has never properly integrated the Japanese turbo hybrid V6 into its engine compartment, the fault in particular of a too extreme concept of "size zero" at the level of the sidepods and of poor communication between English and Japanese .

Ninth in 2015, McLaren drank the chalice to the dregs for many years. It was only from the end of 2019 that the pretensions of the orange single-seaters were able to reasonably aim for podiums. The gadin wiped out in March 2022 should be dragged out for at least this season, if not several, especially with the introduction of the budgetary ceiling which prevents teams from exploding spending on Research & Development.

In Bahrain, McLaren was running behind. © Florent Gooden / DPPI

NO, by Jérémy Satis

On paper, it is true that there is little reason to be optimistic for McLaren. Unlike Mercedes and Aston Martin who are also experiencing a sluggish start, the Woking team's concerns are unfortunately not limited to bouncing (a painful problem but which, once resolved, allows performance to be recovered). No, among the poor performers at the start of the season, McLaren is certainly the team furthest behind and the one with the most work to do.

And yet, it would be advisable not to bury them too soon. It was in fact only the first Grand Prix of a season marked by new technical regulations on a scale that had not been seen for forty years. There is still a lot of undiscovered potential in all single-seaters, including the MCL36. Also, McLaren suffered from having driven very little during the Bahrain tests, and we can already imagine that once this delay is made up, things will be a little better. Sunday evening, in the orange ranks, we were congratulating ourselves on having succeeded for the first time this year in completing a Grand Prix distance. Enough to acquire essential data to progress quickly.

And above all, this 2022 season will constitute a frantic development race, with surely convergences to be observed towards the concepts that work best. With this in mind, I can hardly imagine Haas et Alfa Romeo, for example, to stay this high for a very long time, both for financial and human reasons. The cap budget may have been put in place, but the small teams will never keep up with the big teams in terms of updating their packages.

And with its significant resources, I can hardly imagine McLaren remaining in the cart for very long. Probably they won't be back in the Top 10 in Jeddah this weekend, or even able to win a race this year, but I really can't imagine Zak Brown, Andreas Seidl or even this winner that is Lando Norris, stand idly by in such a situation. We will have to be patient, but McLaren will come back.

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