McLaren sporting director Sam Michael says “growth and regrowth” is needed at the team in order for it to compete for world championship success.
The team slumped to fifth in the world championship last year and failed to achieve a single podium finish.
“We’ve made no secret of our disappointment at how the 2013 season turned out,” said Michael.
“The aim now is to get back to winning – that’s what McLaren exists to do – but there’s a certain amount of growth and regrowth that needs to take place before we return to a position where we can challenge for the world championship.
“The good thing is that we’ve acknowledged that, and we’ve actually been working towards that goal for many months now.
“We have Honda waiting in the wings, we have a number of key technical staff bolstering our existing design and engineering teams, and we are fostering the careers of our young drivers, all of whom have an incredible amount of potential.”
Michael said it will be vital for the team to achieve as much running as they can with the new car at the three pre-season tests. “I think the key to the first quarter of the season could well be consistency,” he said.
“It’ll be critical in the pre-season tests – firstly, to enable the drivers and engineers to learn about and understand the behavior of the new car; but, secondly, to provide us with the mileage and data our designers at the MTC need to further refine and develop the car for the year ahead.”
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Image © McLaren/Hoch Zwei
RL
24th January 2014, 14:04
It already sounds like an excuse for the (lack of) performance this upcoming season. Not the Mclaren I know, unfortunately.
effone
24th January 2014, 14:23
OMG, you mean it gets bigger!
spoutnik (@spoutnik)
24th January 2014, 18:38
haahaha! good one! :’D
Palle (@palle)
24th January 2014, 15:59
Maybe they actually need to shrink to realize they have to cut all activities not focussed on McLarens “reson d’etre”. My experience is that as organisations grow they “invent” administrative processes which creates a need for employees, who are not brainwashed with the core business and suddenly the core technical staff are working to “serve” the administrations demands and spending increasingly less time on producing core business.
andrew_donny (@andrew_donny)
24th January 2014, 17:04
I think “growth and regrowth” – which sounds faintly like a communist government policy – should start with getting rid of Sam Michael. Things got gradually worse under him at Williams and he has taken his talents for make good things into bad to McLaren. When will team bosses pick up on this?!
MilkyWhite
25th January 2014, 21:47
Fully agree. He is leading McLaren down the 8 year road of “regrowth”. Williams is still recovering from it.
Chad (@chaddy)
24th January 2014, 18:44
How can you go from the best car at the end of a season, to being so immediately bad you need TWO years to get back on pace?