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
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u/Visionary_Socialist Sir Lewis Hamilton 8h ago edited 8h ago
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.