Ataxia wrote:UgncreativeUsergname wrote:uhh good comeback Kimi-ICE
I know, right?
mario wrote:As for McLaren, I do agree that the car is a new concept and should, in theory, have more scope for development, but at the same time they are going to pay heavily for that in the short term. It looks like McLaren will be losing a substantial amount of funding for 2014 if they finish this low down in the WCC - I recall seeing a figure of a potential drop of £40 million in revenue from FOM if they were to finish 6th in the WCC.
Even for a well funded team like McLaren, that is a hefty hit to take to the finances at a critical time, particularly when their engine costs have risen in recent years (and the new turbo engines will be much more expensive to boot). Sam Michael has hinted that their present troubles are having a potential impact on the amount of resources they can allocate to their 2014 campaign, so it may be that their poor performance this year does have a knock on effect in 2014.
Well, McLaren have proven they can take a big ol' financial hit before. I think they've got the nous to sort it all out next year, personally...but I'm no Mystic Meg.
The $100 million fine in the wake of Spygate was certainly a big hit, although there is a suggestion that Mercedes paid at least part of, and possibly all of, the fine that McLaren received (which also seems to have been one of the triggers for the relationship between both sides to start breaking down, since Mercedes didn't appreciate ending up with the bill for that). This time around, the financial hit is likely to come at the one point in time when McLaren does not have any factory support, so it will be interesting to see how McLaren cope when they are effectively on their own.
eytl wrote:nigellamansell wrote:Sam doesn't have much luck does he? First Williams went off the boil on his watch and now McLaren....not saying that he's responsible but he must be thinking "oh no...not again!"
Sam Michael: cause or effect?
Discuss if you wish.
To be fair, some might argue that Williams were already going into decline by the time that Sam joined that team given that he joined them in 2001. If anything, the team went through a slight boost in competitiveness in the next couple of years after he joined (they were more competitive than McLaren in 2002 and, arguably, in 2003 as well), so he didn't seem to do them any harm in the short term.
Equally, one could say that, in some ways, it was the loss of manufacturer support from BMW that really sealed the decline of Williams - the relationship was beginning to break down in 2004 and, by 2005, the relationship was pretty cold by that point given BMW had announced they would be linking up with Sauber instead. Ironically, he ended up moving to McLaren at about the same time that Mercedes started to withdraw manufacturer support from them, though at least McLaren have been able to find another manufacturer (Honda) that is willing to support them in the future.
2006 was a poor year, but it could be argued that was only partially down to the team itself, since Xtrac, their transmission supplier, were also partially at fault too (it's notable that, after that season, Williams did shift their gearbox design team in house rather than to a third party). The Toyota engine was, although relatively light on fuel consumption, also lagging behind a little in the power stakes - Toyota were one of the outfits that had a more conservative interpretation of the rules than Ferrari, Renault or Mercedes when the development restrictions kicked in in 2007, and they paid for that in the longer term.
After that, it could be said that, in many ways, Williams tended to finish more or less where you would expect a team of their size given they'd shrunk down into a midfield team - behind the manufacturers and battling with the customer teams of the major outfits. Their relatively high ranking in 2007 was a bit of a fluke in some ways - McLaren were disqualified, Honda had completely screwed up the RA107, as had Toyota with the TF107, and Red Bull were quick on occasion but suffered from chronic reliability problems due to their new "seamless shift" gearbox, which was introduced that season but proved to be very fragile.
I suppose that you could also debate whether McLaren were quite the same slick operation that they prided themselves on being even before Sam joined the team. Whilst they were clumsy in the pit lane in 2012, they had also made some notable blunders along the way before he turned up - remember Button's car overheating in Monaco in 2010 because they didn't remove a bung from the radiators, or the botched pit stop in the 2011 British GP that put Button out of the race? They took a lot of flack in the early half of 2012 but, to be fair, by the latter half of 2012 their stops were much slicker and, with the exception of the botched stop in Malaysia, have been pretty solid in the pit lane this year as well.
It could also be said that McLaren's problems in recent years have tended to stem from their technical department - the botched blown exhaust designs in 2011 that, had they not copied Red Bull, could have seen them really struggle, whilst reliability was not their strongest suit in 2012. Even their current woes right now seem to lead back to correlation issues in the wind tunnel and a dispute with Pirelli over the accuracy of their wind tunnel scale tyres (over complaints that Pirelli mislead them over the stiffness and deflection characteristics of their tyres), rather than anything to do with the other side of the pit lane where Sam works as sporting director.
Now, whilst I would not necessarily say that Sam Michael was the most competent person in the pit lane at his job, when you consider the situation he was in at Williams for much of his career, his record isn't necessarily that bad. I wouldn't say that he was brilliant at his role, but probably not a total disaster either - I'd say that he was fairly average overall.
