By Graham Duxbury
Formula One from the Inside
McLaren in
reverse gear?
In one of the most dominant displays the Formula One world had
seen, the McLaren team won all but one race in the sixteen-race
1988 season. The spoils were almost equally divided between
the team’s drivers – Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost. Although the
Frenchman amassed more points, the championship title went to
Senna, thanks to the complex scoring system of the day.
Graham Duxbury is a former
racing driver, champion and TV
commentator. He is featured in
the Hall of Fame at the Daytona
Motor Speedway in the USA.
Here, in 1984, he made history
by winning the famous 24-hour
sports car race in an all-South
African team, partnered by Sarel
van der Merwe and Tony Martin.
T
he team’s success was no flash-inthe-pan. Founded by the great New
Zealander Bruce McLaren in 1963, it
made its F1 debut in 1966 with the first Grand
Prix win coming less than two years later
when McLaren himself won the Belgian GP.
But tragedy struck on 2 June 1970 when
McLaren was killed in a testing accident.
Without Bruce’s leadership, the team seemed
to lose its way in F1, switching focus to
sports car racing in America. However,
1971 began promisingly enough when
Denny Hulme led the SA GP at Kyalami –
the season’s opener – before retiring with
mechanical problems.
The team ultimately regrouped, returning to
winning ways in 1972 when Hulme won at
Kyalami and, together with team mate Peter
Revson, scored ten more podiums during the
year. It also gave Jody Scheckter, our future
champion, his F1 debut in the USA.
The team’s first world championship win
came in 1974 with Emerson Fittipaldi who left
soon after to form his own team. The second
was with James Hunt who went on to clinch
the ’76 title after a memorable battle with Niki
Lauda.
In 1981 McLaren merged with Ron Dennis’
Project Four Racing team and Dennis
took over as team principal, organising a
shareholder buyout to assume full control.
This set the stage for the team’s most
successful era. With Porsche and Honda
engines, Lauda, Prost and Senna took seven
drivers’ championships between 1984 and
’88. With Mercedes-Benz engines and ace
designer Adrian Newey on board, further
championships came in 1998 and ‘99 with
Mika Häkkinen.
In 2007 McLaren paired Lewis Hamilton with
former world champion Fernando Alonso.
On paper this seemed a good move. But on
the track, intense rivalry between the team
mates saw them finish level on points - one
point behind Kimi Raikkonen’s title-winning
tally. Surely, with better driver management,
the trophy would have found its way to
McLaren’s Woking base?
It was a year in which the team was rocked
by controversy, when it was accused of
benefitting from confidential Ferrari data.
The fine was a draconian US$100 million.
McLaren’s next and most recent driver’s
championship title went to Lewis Hamilton
in 2008, but the coveted constructor’s title
went to Ferrari.
In early 2009 Dennis, probably needing time
to recover from the 2007 debacle, retired as
team principal, handing the role to Martin
Whitmarsh. His tenure began badly with the
team being given a three-race suspended
ban for misleading stewards at the Australian
and Malaysian GPs. Nevertheless, the
brilliance of Hamilton helped rally the troops
as he won again in Hungary and Singapore.
Jenson Button was brought in to partner
Hamilton in an all-British line-up the
following year and impressed by winning two
of the first four races. While Hamilton added
three more, it wasn’t enough for better than
fifth and fourth places respectively in the
championship.
The team mounted the only serious
challenge to Red Bull in 2011, with Hamilton
and Button winning three races each.
Butt on finished the driver’s championship in
second place with Hamilton in third behind
Sebastian Vettel.
| Wheels in Action
82
july 2014
Hamilton ended his lifelong affiliation
with McLaren at the end of 2012, and
was replaced by Sergio Perez. But it was
a season of further disappointment for
the team, as its drivers failed to make the
podium in a single race for the first time
in 33 years.
In a further bid to resurrect McLaren’s
championship aspirations, Whitmarsh
was fired in early January 2014 and
Dennis – now 66 - returned to take the
helm. He made a stirring speech to his
staff, promising a return to winning ways.
After the Australian GP, in which new
team member Kevin Magnussen
and Button finished second and
third following Daniel Ricciardo’s
reclassification, Dennis is reported to
have told his staff: “If you think that’s
good enough you’re not on the same
page as me……”
Sadly, to-date, these were McLaren’s
last podium finishes. For a team that
has won 182 GPs and 20 world drivers’
and constructors’ championships, as
McLaren has, success is vital.
For Dennis, who started life as a
mechanic 48 years ago and is today
CEO of the McLaren Group, worth in the
region of 300-million pounds (R 5 billion),
success is his oxygen. Failure is not an
option.
But will he have to wait until
McLaren is reunited with
Honda once again in 2015 for
things to turn around?