During the first 2023 Grands Prix, the McLaren qualified at the back of the grid. Twenty-one months later, the team is World Constructors' Champion. Story of a rebirth.
That's it. Finally. After a wait of 26 years, McLaren has regained the title of F1 Constructors' World Champion, for the ninth time in its history, like Williams. Of these two emblematic teams of the 1990s-2000s, which almost disappeared from the grid, only the orange team managed the feat of returning to the top.
Because winning comebacks are rarer than one might think in the recent history of Formula 1. Only McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull have regained their crowns after a period of drought. So how did Woking manage to become the best team in the world again, after being second to last in the constructors' standings in 2015 and 2017?
To put it simply, the responsibility for McLaren's recovery rests largely on two people: Zak Brown, the general manager of McLaren Racing appointed in 2018, and Andrea Stella, the team principal, who became team principal in 2022. If it is simplistic to reduce the success of teams of 1000 employees to a few people, it must nevertheless be admitted that the arrival of these two complementary personalities has enabled Woking to take major steps on the path to success.
2019: the MCL34, first stone of reconstruction
In 2018, after the fiasco of the Honda years, McLaren thought it would get back on track by powering its chassis with a more efficient engine, the Renault V6. However, even without the Japanese block, the MCL33 proved to be a poor single-seater, incapable of maintaining downforce when cornering. His poor performance forced the engineers at Woking to conduct a merciless soul-searching over his working methods. Since then, the Italian has attached paramount importance to the quality of its simulation tools.
Designed under the collegial direction of Pat Fry and Andrea Stella, the McLaren MCL34 benefited from this reconsideration and put the team back on the rails of success. Healthy, without crippling defects, it allowed Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris to collect more than double the points than in 2018.
However, despite these good performances, Zak Brown and Andreas Seidl, then team principal, decided to recruit a new technical director, James Key, who took office in April 2019.
2020-2021: thank you, Covid!
Although officially head of the technical department, the British engineer did not have much influence on the MCL35 and MCL35M, closely derived from the 2019 single-seater. Indeed, due to the Covid pandemic, the chassis were frozen in 2020 and 2021. In these two seasons, McLaren finished in third and fourth place in the constructors' standings.
Now, looking back, Brown believes that Seidl and Key inherited a competitive car and took undue credit for the previous team's efforts.
“Everyone blamed the good results of the 2021 season on the newcomers, Seidl and Key, when in reality, they were due to the previous team Stella and Fry, editor's note). The first time we saw the result of Seidl and Key's contributions was in 2022…”
2022: Key's failure
This sounds like an admission, as if the American manager regretted having hired Key. There's something there.
The latter's first complete creation, the MCL36, was a dismal failure. Generating too much drag and unreliable, it was particularly slow. While the MCL35 and MCL35M were the fourth fastest cars on the grid in 2020 (+1.35%) and 2021 (+0.92%), the MCL36 was only the fifth fastest single-seater on the 2022 grid, with a huge deficit of 1.26% compared to Red Bull.
It was the failure of the evolution introduced in France and announced as an effective remedy which convinced Brown to make some changes.
December 2022: Stella at the helm
The American manager thus decided not to retain Andreas Seidl (who wanted to leave as quickly as possible for Sauber-Audi) and to replace him in December 2022 with another Andrea, Stella, who had refused the position in 2019, believing that he was not ready .
Once appointed, the modest and affable Italian took a radical decision by dismissing James Key and replacing him with three more specialized technical directors.
Stella criticized the British engineer for management that was too centralizing and did not sufficiently stimulate the creativity of the troops. Thus, Peter Prodromou, still considered by the paddock as one of the best aerodynamicists, was
“underutilized” according to Stella while the aerodynamics team lacked“autonomy”.
“There is a misunderstanding regarding decision-making in Formula 1, Stella then explained. People often think that the technical director must make decisions. In reality, its real role is to give rise to competitive ideas, which will then naturally lead to decisions.”
“That’s what we’re trying to do. We no longer want to find ourselves in the very comfortable situation of having a manager who makes all the decisions, but who does not stimulate the creation of ideas by the teams or restrains them in one way or another.”
With James Key and Tony Salter (the chief aerodynamicist) out of the way, Stella successfully redefined the MCL60 development program.
During the first four races, it suffered an average deficit of seven tenths of a second on the Red Bull benchmark. Between Austin and Interlagos, this delay was reduced to 0”14. This leap forward was the biggest gain in performance among all F1 2023 cars. Badly born, the McLaren finished the season as the best F1 2023 after the Red Bull.
Without an influx of new blood (Rob Marshall had not yet arrived), with obsolete tools (the new wind tunnel was not yet ready), McLaren succeeded in 2023 in transforming its single-seater thanks to better exploitation of its resources, more collegial and making the most of his talents. As if the departure of Key and Seidl had freed people's minds.
2024: the coronation
The first McLaren designed under the direction of Stella, the MCL38 started the season poorly, before gaining in competitiveness and becoming the benchmark from the Miami Grand Prix, where a substantial evolution was introduced.
While the performance of the other single-seaters varied greatly depending on the circuit, the McLaren stood out for its versatility, performing well both on slow tracks requiring a lot of downforce and on fast circuits requiring little load. and minimum drag.
If Stella was able to build a solid technical structure and instill in her colleagues an open and non-stigmatizing corporate culture, Brown for his part was able to keep the team afloat, avoiding bankruptcy during the Covid years, by convincing shareholders of the merits of his plan despite mediocre results and by managing to attract numerous sponsors.
“[En 2020-2021]we were really on the edge of the abyss, recognizes the American. We were paying all our bills, but we were months away from closing up shop. We knew we could get through the year, but we were in a situation where, without a cash injection, we would have been in danger.”
Between the American with his effective patter and strong character and the reserved but determined Italian, McLaren found two complementary fathers to rise from his ashes.
Certainly, mistakes were made, by the team and the drivers, certainly it was crowned with only six victories (which had not happened since 1999, when Ferrari won with six successes as well), but the quality of his engineering and his cohesion finally prevailed, allowing him to narrowly go orange to achieve the much-hoped-for crown.
