Italian GP: Team Review – McLaren Mercedes

The McLarens in action at Monza

One of the best teams in Formula One celebrate their 50^th Anniversary in the sport. The team ends up scoring a single point in the Italian GP. These are two contrasting emotions and pretty much sum up the season for the UK based team. With the MP4-28’s problem well known it probably doesn’t make sense for McLaren-Mercedes to work on it with just seven races left. It will be like fighting a lost battle.

The team, however, continues to fight, being just off the front-runners and that is how it is expected to be till the end of the season. Both Jenson Button and Sergio Perez have been able to get the car to the chequered flag but not beyond at best fifth place. It’s a catch 22 for Bruce McLaren’s dream team. On one hand they are celebrating 50 glorious years in Formula One yet they will be remembering it as one of the worst seasons(if not the worst) in the history of a brilliant team.

Qualifying

The McLaren’s continued to keep their spot in the top 10 despite some surprises in the pack. They could have gone out in Q2 but the last timed lap was enough for both Perez and Button to stay for Q3 whilst they pushed out Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen out of qualifying. Both Perez and Button were not able to improve their time’s by much and qualified eight and ninth respectively. McLaren seemed to have got both the cars with the same configuration as both drivers had an immaculate consistency on the time sheets and never really had a big gap between them.

Race Day

The McLarens weren’t expected to chase down the likes of Red-Bull and Ferrari but they hoped to make some ground on the back-markers like the Scuderia Toro Rosso’s of Daniel Ricciardo and Jean Eric Vergne.

Jenson Button

Jenson with his experience in the McLaren was able to get the car unscratched out from turn one but lost some positions. Mclaren lacked straight line speed and it took sometime for Button to catch up with few of the backmarkers. He overtook Hamilton on lap 8 for 10th place and was lucky to miss out bumping into Jean Eric Vergne in the Toro Rosso who went off the track with a blown out engine. That put Button in ninth place.

The Brit was overtaken by Romain Grosjean in the Lotus on lap 45. Hamilton then fought hard and overtook his ex teammate in the final laps of the race. Button then hung on in the struggling Mclaren to keep Kimi behind him and take the Chequered Flag in tenth place.

Sergio Perez

Perez was lucky to escape the impact of the Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen locking up and crashing into his Mclaren from behind. He had to take the escape road on turn one to avoid any further damage. The Mclaren carried on while Kimi had to make an unscheduled pit stop for a nose and tyre change. Perez drove quite steady for the rest of the race but was overtaken by Grosjean for P10 on lap 38 at the first corner. The Mexican driver was later overtaken by the two faster cars of Kimi and Hamilton and finally crossed the finish line in a disappointing twelfth place.

The race result wasn’t a great tribute to the 50 year old team and wouldn’t have pleased even Bruce McLaren. But it’s difficult to bounce from a mistake that involves aerodynamics. A McLaren fan though would hope that the team among the celebrations has learned from their mistakes and come up with a better car in 2014. Learning from mistakes could be a fitting tribute to the optimistic Founder, at least that would have pleased him.