For obvious reasons, McLaren-Honda has been quite disappointing to watch over the past few seasons and has been the butt of many jokes and memes surrounding Formula One at the moment. But there’s one other reason why I feel, in a way, a little mad at the team.
The 2015 season was looking phenomenal for McLaren in 2015… that is, until the car actually went out onto the track for pre-season testing. It wasn’t so much the reunion of McLaren and Honda, the legendary partnership that had great success in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, which had me excited. In fact, the reunion excited me very little.
It was the spectacular driver lineup that had been thrilled. I actually called the team’s lineup “the best lineup of 2015” in my pre-season analysis of the driver lineups for the season. Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso were two of the best and most experienced drivers on the grid at the time. That’s why it would have been spectacular to see the duo on the same team and they would have surely been a powerhouse on the grid.
That’s why, to this day, I’m very disappointed at McLaren-Honda for denying us of such a spectacular driver lineup by providing them with a substandard (perhaps an understatement) car. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity that could have become one of the greatest F1 pairings in history.
And I think that what has made me even angrier is that McLaren-Honda has single-handedly destroyed the careers of these two drivers. Everyone has been patient with Honda to get things fixed, not least the drivers for the team that have had to struggle with their reliability and performance. And this waiting with little sign of improvement has drove both drivers to insanity, to the point where they no longer enjoy the sport.
Button ended his career last season and Alonso is on track to end his career (or at least the Formula One portion of his career) at the end of the season. I think that the mechanical failure for the team in Canada should be the breaking point in the relationship and the point that McLaren finally says “enough is enough”.
McLaren is a team on the verge of collapse if they don’t switch engine supplier soon. They need to change things before they cross the point of no return, which is rapidly approaching.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company. Assumptions made in any analysis contained within this article are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the author.
