Originally Posted by
Backward point
You're doing a lot of "imagining".
Of course I am, I don't work for McLaren so I'm envisioning what could possibly be done
Honda supply the engines, sponsorship and pay the drivers' salaries. This is believed to be worth $100m per season. A supply of Mercedes engines is, allegedly, (based on the negotiations over Valtteri Bottas's move to Mercedes) €17m per season. Which gives a funding shortfall in the order of $115m.
I don't know how much the McLaren road car division is worth, or how much profit it makes, but you may be confusing profit with turnover. And "imagining" a willingness to endanger the road car business by siphoning off funds to shore up what is now a back-marking Formula 1 team.
Nope, I'm not confusing turn over with profit. A quick look at McLarens website shows a profit last year of £23.5M. Didn't Ferarri once upon a time only sell road cars to fund their racing? I'm not suggesting that McLaren are doing the same, but it IS an avenue of extra income.
Don't think that a Mercedes engine will make McLaren a winning team. How many Mercedes customer teams have won races since 2014? In 2014 they managed to under-achieve with a Mercedes power unit.
I agree with you, it won't make them a winning team straight away, but as long as they can start getting back up the field, they will start attracting sponsors again, plus as we all know, the more points they get, the more money they get.
Right now they have to build a very expensive new wind tunnel or comprehensively refurbish the existing one, as they suffered the dreaded "correlation" issues, where on-track reality doesn't correlate with wind tunnel results. At the moment, McLaren are using the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, as other teams, including Mercedes and Ferrari, have been forced to do.
McLaren haven't won a race since 2012, half a decade ago. It's not just about the engine.
Again, while winning championships is the ultimate goal, it isn't strictly necessary to survive in F1. A decent engine will help them tread water, right now they are sinking.
McLaren's best - perhaps only - hope is Japanese culture and pride. Honda's reputation as one of the world's best engine builders is currently being savaged, because once a fortnight for most of the year their power units are failing in front of an estimated tv audience of 16 billion people. Walking away would result in even greater humiliation, so they will need to resolve their issues. Although they are now in their third season, they have elected to start again, with a new engine layout, which has resulted in vibration problems, which did not affect their previous engines. So, for the second time in three years they have to develop a new engine in public. And, according to Gary Anderson, who experienced Japanese culture and working practices when he was with Jordan and used Mugen engines, nothing happens quickly or without a great deal of bureaucracy. And Formula 1 needs things to happen quickly. Imagine the difference between McLaren Honda and Mercedes or Ferrari, where everything is in-house apart from a very few fabrication jobs which are outsourced. The logistics, language and cultural barriers are mind-boggling.
I disagree. Culture and pride didn't stop Honda walking away from F1 when Brawn stepped up and bought the team. At the end of the day it's a business, and an engine that fails in every race is going to be a bad advertisement for business.
Formula 1 is rather more complicated these days, and the era in which Honda could supply engines which were more powerful than any of their rivals and the teams who used them could produce cars with more downforce than anybody else is long gone.
I feel sorry for Eric Boullier. He had to manage Lotus on loaves and fishes, and now has to manage the very public tragic shambles that is McLaren. I'm sure that he's a nice chap, and a very capable manager, but he does seem to be rather unlucky.