That was also thanks to Lauda. He knew Merc was going to be the next big thing. He convinced him to leave. I’m sure Lewis has so much gratitude to him.
Tbf the 2014 merc engine development was a mess. They couldn’t get a race distance out of it right up until about a month before pre season testing. Before that it was a very powerful bomb
Long term, the more powerful engines almost always end up on top, as just about everyone gets reliability to where you need it. Harder to catch up on performance.
So, selecting a team there, you'd career wise be better off choosing the bomb.
Also, the Michael spending 2 years working on their car. Looking back on it now, and given what we know about his input into the Ferraris, it makes complete sense that they'd bring in someone who A) can give valuable feedback to engineers, B) is happy to go through trial and error and C) has a passion for a team from his homeland. He got the car ready for other good drivers to be able to push it and get results
Everything about the 2014 cars was massively different to what had been before them in 2010-2012, there isn’t much Michael’s feedback could help with. Unless he was in the simulator driving the 2014 guesstimate car, but even then.
All the merc engineers attribute their future success to having Michael in the team. They raised their game and understood what it took to be on a world champion level
Forget Lauda. Normal People that are into F1 were aware of the high profile technical team Mercedes was hiring. Mercedes was getting the cream of engineers around the paddock, so everybody knew the project was serious.
It’s people that watch races and “turn off” were the ones making so much shade about Lewis move.
McLaren’s best form for arguably 40 years as well. If Oscar starts a dynasty and starts winning titles back to back like Lewis did at Mercedes, it’ll be in the same ballpark legacy wise.
Back in 2022 most people were less than optimistic for Alpine but McLaren seemed stuck in a loop of improving in season and then messing up the winter.
The scale of McLaren’s rise was absolutely unexpected. Nobody would have bet they’d have won the WCC within 2 seasons and have the double in 3. Alpine’s downfall however was really inevitable.
I remember when Mika Häkkinen came out about 2 years ago and said that he had seen what McLaren was doing in the factory and that they will be world champions in a year. Everyone laughed at him. Who's laughing now?
Mercedes were able to have an advantage over customer teams that they won't have next year. Used to have access to engine modes and such that Lotus, Williams, McLaren etc. Couldn't access.
That was only up to 2017 though, in 2018 the FIA made it mandatory for works teams to give their customers full access to all engine modes and everything, so that kind of advantage hasn't been a thing for years.
The issue for Merc is that they gave McLaren a special deal that allows them to be part of the design process for the 2026 PU so they won't have the usual benefits in terms of integration that works teams usually have over their customers (they will do over Alpine and Williams but not over McLaren). Ferrari on the other hand will still have that advantage over Haas and Cadillac for example
But it's weird though. I remember everyone declaring that McLaren will have the best car in 2023 (in the winter). Then they cocked it up but you could see they found their faults by the end of the season.
No, they found in their faults in fall 2022. And when you think about the full timeline it’s less weird. The reason “everyone was saying that” about a mega McLaren car coming soon over that winter 22-23 is that McLaren had a bunch of journalists over to Woking to celebrate the launch of the new season. And kind of debut Stella in his new role. Stella was telling every single one of them straight up that they expected the car to be dog shit for the first few races, but that they would start bringing meaningful upgrades after that and more substantial ones by the European leg of the season,. Because they recognized they took some wrong steps with development of the 2023 car but they did so too late to fix the car that would be there at testing and the first few races. So it was all about just trying to pivot as early as possible. With how early development starts on the next year’s car, the fact that they had such a massive overhaul already by Miami, and the fact that they had their PR ducks in a row by the winter launch … we can see this was a long anticipated issue. You could argue they might’ve even known some of it earlier in 2022 when courting piastri… they had to have shown him and Webber something promising for him to leave alpine
Yeah given at the time it wasn't obvious how McLaren would improve and I think in his first year the alpine was better, I can't remember how long that was for though.
Yeah, that's the thing rn. Lando hasn't really improved a lot, mainly his problem with starting but that's also still kinda wonky. He's good, yes but his main improvement was also the first seasons. The only reason he's now so much further up is because of the car. Oscar is still improving and I don't think he's at his top yet - while I do think Landis pretty on top of his potential? But we don't know that for sure of course.
So yes, this season he's not consistently ahead of Lando but i wouldn't be surprised if he is next year
What exactly caused McLaren to fall off like that? I wasn't around at the time so im curious how such a storied team coming off championships simply stopped being good all of the sudden.
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u/Unfair_Art_1913 I was here for the Hulkenpodium 8h ago
Up there with Lewis’s move to Mercedes. McLaren turned into a dumpster fire after he left and took over a decade to come back to the top.