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thestaggy
Honorary Master
- Joined
- May 11, 2011
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Same could be said for Tyrrell, Lotus, Brabham and currently Williams. If pedigree was worth anything, neither team had/has any business at the back of the grid but they wound up there.
Closer inspection and Ron Dennis seems to be the biggest baddie in this sorry tale. He played a role in executive-level acrimony within the team and may have inadvertently worsened their financial woes.
2007: Dennis promises Alonso #1 status. Dennis doesn't manage his racers and McLaren, who had two drivers in the championship race, lose out to Ferrari and Kimi. Had Dennis backed a horse they win the championship. Instead they have infighting and Spygate. You can blame Alonso for this, but things get much worse after Alonso leaves.
2008: Post-Spygate, Lewis wins the championship. Harmony.
2009: Ron Dennis steps aside as Team Principal in order to focus on McLaren's road car division. Martin Whitmarsh steps in. Ross Brawn is running around desperate for an engine. Whitmarsh okays a supply of F1's most powerful engines for F1's best chassis. We know what happens next. As for McLaren's on-track performance, they start off badly but over the second half of the season Lewis tallies 40-points (second only to Vettel, 45 points).
2010: Hamilton finishes 16-points behind world champion Vettel. Still not bad 3-years out from Spygate and Alonso.
2011: Red Bull and Vettel nuke everyone, but McLaren was still good enough to power Button to 2nd in the championship.
2012: The rot starts. McLaren still win races but they are now not only well behind Red Bull; Ferrari have gapped them as and Lotus have zoomed up.
2013: Disaster. Hamilton leaves and they crash to 5th in the constructors, nearly 200-points behind Lotus. Behind the scenes Ron Dennis wants to seize majority control of the McLaren Group, ousting longtime friend and stakeholder Mansour Ojjeh in the process. Dennis tries to blindside Ojjeh by holding advanced talks with Chinese investors. Vodafone also end their sponsorship, leaving McLaren without a title sponsor. Dennis refuses to lower McLaren's commercial demands in the face of declining on-track performance and a tighter economic landscape. Its just bad business all round by Dennis.
2014: Before the season, Dennis sacks Martin Whitmarsh, a personal friend of Ojjeh's. Another power move by Dennis. Disarray as they start their partnership with Honda and it never improves. Nightmare season.
2015: More power moves, this time it is Ojjeh as he ensures Jenson Button continues with the team while Dennis was pushing for Kevin Magnussen
2016: Ojjeh (25% owner) and the Bahraini sovereign investment fund (50% owner) band together and have Dennis ousted. Team begins restructuring.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/38000198
The team was still competitive with Alonso there and for a number of years after he left. The real catalyst seems to be miscues on the part of Ron Dennis.
Red Bull didn't have to develop that engine, so it is easy to say this. Honda finally stopped being the weakest engine on the grid towards the end of last season when they surpassed Renault in the power stakes and don't forget how Red Bull complained about Renault's lack of power as well. Before the reliability woes it was the lack of power Horner was lamenting.
