158 replies to this topic

[ViMaMo]

18 was a car ahead of the times, along with it too much packaging problems and Merc engines were contributors to that too. If it wasn't for the 18, mclaren would not have been competitive in 2005.

[V3TT3L]

The McLaren savage mob demands a human sacrifice to placate it's fury.

'I'm Sam' Michaels was the chosen one and will be punished by getting his salary confortably at home until the end of his contract.

[Lazy]

While a lost opportunity with both Vettel and Red Bull being still fairly green and prone to mistakes, with the most points scored in the second half of the season, it was a great example of how both a driver and a team could turn around a season after a disastrous start, and launched McLaren as the benchmark of in-season development creating a myth that is still perpetuated by some to this day.

It will be interesting to see peoples views if that would happen again this year.

[ElDictatore]

18 was a car ahead of the times, along with it too much packaging problems and Merc engines were contributors to that too. If it wasn't for the 18, mclaren would not have been competitive in 2005.

Of course it was. But it took 2 years for that to happen and more for people to realize that fact.
What I was going to say is that just because they have this freaking dog of car now, doesn't mean they are midfield for the next couple of years.

To the topic, nobody can say how much and even if Sam Michael is responsible for this and last season. Some say his achievement aren't there, but let me ask you: What can someone of us know and prove that he achieved or didn't for that matter? Formula 1 is probably the most secretive sport in the world but somehow everybody knows everything which is going on. So how it really looks inside of a team is not visible to us, even the "atmosphere" in a team. There are enough people who say that McLaren aren't that cold as many make them out to be. They will have mistakes somewhere in the team but we do not really know exactly which part of the team that is. And I think they will have a closer look at themselves and solve this.

Also what McLaren made special was that they were always ahead of anybody else in terms of drivers, engineering, money and creativity. Nowadays however the whole grid is way more competitive and bunched up and as a result, a mistake is more costly. Additionally money is more difficult to get from sponsors.

So please could we end this witch hunt? It's neither Michael, Whitmarsh, Button or Perez. And even if, we couldn't possibly know unless the team steps forward and points at the mistakes.

[Nemo1965]

As other posters have already indicated: McLaren seems to have an engineering problem.

All I hear from experts like Gary Anderson is that McLaren for the last twenty years have built cars with a relative hard-front suspension. Well, if it works, then it works. But slowly but surely, the engineers at Woking must start scratching their heads. You can believe in a certain design philosophy but after a couple of years you must start wondering if you are stuck up an alley.

I don't think THAT (if that's the reason) is Sam Michaels fault.

[TheThirdTenor1]

Never liked this guy. I am not sure what good accomplishments can be attributed to him. He was Ralf's engineer at Jordan and Williams brought him over to work with Ralf. When he first joined Williams he was not longer just Ralf's engineer but was the head of the race operations for the team and in this role he screwed Montoya more than one time in favor of Ralf. At one point Ralf had 6-7 engineers working for him while Montoya only had 1, this was the moment when Montoya threaten to quit the team and had a word with Frank. That relationship never worked as many here remember the swearing at each other over the radio by both.
After BMW and Montoya left, the team took a nose dive and never recovered.. Frank should've had fired this guy a long time ago and when it was announced that he was going to Mclaren I could not believe it. I find it very hard to believe that out of so many talented people in F1 and Mclaren's buying power, they go for the least talented person.

Wasn't he Fretzen's race enginner at Jordan in 1999?

[ZooL]

Because while Ferrari were busy building their team around Alonso, and Red Bull building their team around Vettel, McLaren instead opted for their aggressive policy of equality breaking up a tried and testing engineering set-up with one of the top drivers in the sport to make the ultimately slower driver in the team feel welcome. In spite of this he came within a broken wheel rim of winning the title in 2010, with imo what was the third fastest car overall, and despite the hiccup of the second part of 2011, and the introduction of Pirelli tyres negating his blistering race pace, and neutering his driving style should have won in 2012 but for an unwholesome cacophony of errors, and bad luck with him not putting a foot wrong.

To try and bring this back on topic, I don't think Michael is responsible at all. Unfortunately for him he seems to have become somewhat of a harbinger of failure, and it will probably be this which ultimately costs him his career, when heads higher up begin to roll should McLaren's slump continue. McLaren rely heavily on sponsorship, and it is their PR image with brand McLaren, important in generating said sponsorship, which appears from the outside to have taken precedence with them having sought to cultivate it at the expense of making the tough decisions necessary to win. It seems to me that Ferrari, RBR and now Mercedes are winning first, PR second, their aim is to win no matter what. They'll make publicly unpopular decisions, and play fast and loose with fair play, and driver equality, with all three having gone through copious amounts of public slating because of such decisions, because to them results matter more. McLaren meanwhile appear content to have the moral high ground, and being able to release press statements like 'our drivers race each other' yet you would probably lose count if you tried to count how many times its cost them, a great example being the aggressive equality policy initiated when Button first came in; it seemed done solely to assure the media that this was no longer Hamilton's team and that McLaren could handle having the two most recent British world champions in the same team after the disaster of 2007, while in reality effectively castrating the strategic capability of Lewis' side of the garage, with the team never really seeming to nail it for the rest of Hamilton's tenure. One only has to look at how many media and sponsorship engagements the drivers have to attend when compared to the rest of the grid, and while a counter argument is that it is part of their business model and necessary for generating income, the fact that Button had his significantly reduced in his new contract, while Hamilton listed it as a reason for leaving, suggested that it may have had a detrimental effect, and even decisions like the hiring of Sergio Perez over the much more impressive Nico Hulkenberg seem to emphasise a priority of generating sponsorship more than winning.

This focus on the PR side and brand McLaren when combined with a number of shockingly inept strategy calls, decisions and pit stop bogies, compared to their rivals, particularly Red Bull have helped lead to McLaren's gradual decline, with McLaren going radical with what was the one of the fastest cars last season leading to them toiling in the midfield, losing both their star driver in a shockingly inept, and possibly arrogant (he has nowhere else to go) handling of his contract renewal, and their star technical director (referred to by Button as the one that would help him win the championship), to the same rival furthering the decline. Of course some would refer to the old form is temporary, class is permanent argument, arguing than any dip in form (similar to the period of 1994-97)is temporary, but with a driver line-up that no longer figures any of the medias 'top drivers', a switch to Honda engines, the end of a record points spree, a powerful new rival emerging in the form of Mercedes a team whose existence is partly attributable to one Martin Whitmarsh, whether McLaren can remain a top team and not go down the route of Williams remains to be seen. No. Sam Michael is not responsible.

Good post.

[10e10]

Because while Ferrari were busy building their team around Alonso, and Red Bull building their team around Vettel, McLaren instead opted for their aggressive policy of equality breaking up a tried and testing engineering set-up with one of the top drivers in the sport to make the ultimately slower driver in the team feel welcome. In spite of this he came within a broken wheel rim of winning the title in 2010, with imo what was the third fastest car overall, and despite the hiccup of the second part of 2011, and the introduction of Pirelli tyres negating his blistering race pace, and neutering his driving style should have won in 2012 but for an unwholesome cacophony of errors, and bad luck with him not putting a foot wrong.

To try and bring this back on topic, I don't think Michael is responsible at all. Unfortunately for him he seems to have become somewhat of a harbinger of failure, and it will probably be this which ultimately costs him his career, when heads higher up begin to roll should McLaren's slump continue. McLaren rely heavily on sponsorship, and it is their PR image with brand McLaren, important in generating said sponsorship, which appears from the outside to have taken precedence with them having sought to cultivate it at the expense of making the tough decisions necessary to win. It seems to me that Ferrari, RBR and now Mercedes are winning first, PR second, their aim is to win no matter what. They'll make publicly unpopular decisions, and play fast and loose with fair play, and driver equality, with all three having gone through copious amounts of public slating because of such decisions, because to them results matter more. McLaren meanwhile appear content to have the moral high ground, and being able to release press statements like 'our drivers race each other' yet you would probably lose count if you tried to count how many times its cost them, a great example being the aggressive equality policy initiated when Button first came in; it seemed done solely to assure the media that this was no longer Hamilton's team and that McLaren could handle having the two most recent British world champions in the same team after the disaster of 2007, while in reality effectively castrating the strategic capability of Lewis' side of the garage, with the team never really seeming to nail it for the rest of Hamilton's tenure. One only has to look at how many media and sponsorship engagements the drivers have to attend when compared to the rest of the grid, and while a counter argument is that it is part of their business model and necessary for generating income, the fact that Button had his significantly reduced in his new contract, while Hamilton listed it as a reason for leaving, suggested that it may have had a detrimental effect, and even decisions like the hiring of Sergio Perez over the much more impressive Nico Hulkenberg seem to emphasise a priority of generating sponsorship more than winning.

This focus on the PR side and brand McLaren when combined with a number of shockingly inept strategy calls, decisions and pit stop bogies, compared to their rivals, particularly Red Bull have helped lead to McLaren's gradual decline, with McLaren going radical with what was the one of the fastest cars last season leading to them toiling in the midfield, losing both their star driver in a shockingly inept, and possibly arrogant (he has nowhere else to go) handling of his contract renewal, and their star technical director (referred to by Button as the one that would help him win the championship), to the same rival furthering the decline. Of course some would refer to the old form is temporary, class is permanent argument, arguing than any dip in form (similar to the period of 1994-97)is temporary, but with a driver line-up that no longer figures any of the medias 'top drivers', a switch to Honda engines, the end of a record points spree, a powerful new rival emerging in the form of Mercedes a team whose existence is partly attributable to one Martin Whitmarsh, whether McLaren can remain a top team and not go down the route of Williams remains to be seen. No. Sam Michael is not responsible.

As a McLaren fan, I have to agree with this post. Some of the wrongs in the team happened in, at least similar, way with what is here written.

[Force Ten]

Because while Ferrari were busy building their team around Alonso, and Red Bull building their team around Vettel, McLaren instead opted for their aggressive policy of equality breaking up a tried and testing engineering set-up with one of the top drivers in the sport to make the ultimately slower driver in the team feel welcome. In spite of this he came within a broken wheel rim of winning the title in 2010, with imo what was the third fastest car overall, and despite the hiccup of the second part of 2011, and the introduction of Pirelli tyres negating his blistering race pace, and neutering his driving style should have won in 2012 but for an unwholesome cacophony of errors, and bad luck with him not putting a foot wrong.

As far as versions of history go, this certainly is one.