The McLaren Conondrum

As the age-old saying goes, there is light at the end of every tunnel - for McLaren however, even a glimmer at the end of their 3-year long struggle can’t come soon enough. It’s hard to believe that a team so decorated with championships is battling cars built with a fraction of the budget at the back of the grid, not to say an even smaller share in the sport’s history.

And the numbers don’t lie - McLaren has dished out 20 million euros for every point scored in the championship this year, while leaders Mercedes and Ferrari have spent a (comparatively) meager €1 million for each of their points. There is something clearly wrong with the Woking outfit.

What makes this worse is that the core of the team’s problems isn’t even in Woking, but Tochigi, a city in northern Japan. When team principal (at the time) Whitmarsh announced Honda were to be McLaren’s engine suppliers from 2015, people expected a repeat of the most unlikely yet decorated chapters in the sport’s history.

Powered by Honda’s monstrous V6 turbo engines and unarguably two of the best drivers ever seen in Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, McLaren enjoyed an unmatched 8 world championships and 44 race wins between 1988 and 1992.

The last three seasons however, have been anything but this fairytale. Whitmarsh’s sacking and the unceremonious buy-out of Ron Dennis’ (who also pioneered McLaren-Honda’s glory days) shares in the team last year has left McLaren’s current management in a far from ideal marriage with Honda that they didn’t even choose to be in.

Public statements from the team claiming “95% success with aerodynamic development” and “one of the best chassis’ in F1” doesn’t do their partners any PR favors either. Even worse, a self-proclaimed “predictable” double retirement this weekend at Monza has left this relationship on the ropes. It’s now just a matter of time.

As with most facets of F1 though, this divorce is far more complex than McLaren just wedging Honda engines from the back of their cars - they face a series of rather stiff roadblocks. The tallest of these is that the team will need to first find a viable alternative. Mercedes will have crunched their models and numbers and know how strong McLaren’s chassis really is – reflected by explicitly ruling themselves out as an engine provider. Ferrari giving McLaren engines is about as likely as Real Madrid renting out their coaching staff, training ground and manager to arch rivals Barcelona – it just can’t happen for the sanity of Formula 1.

Which only really leaves McLaren with one alternative option – Renault. Sure, McLaren Renault sounds outlandish, but it is quickly becoming closer to a reality and this is why: Though Renault is a household name in the sport and do have ambitions of being a championship winning works team, this looks largely unlikely to happen before the next major regulation changes in 2021. Crucially, the sport’s management (Brawn, Bratches and co) would want a competitive McLaren team and will be pushing for this move too. With confidence in their aerodynamic package, Red Bull probably wouldn’t mind all too much either.

But this is where we reach our next hurdle. Renault already make engines for 3 teams (Red Bull, Torro Rosso and themselves), and just don’t have the resources or capacity for one more. So for McLaren to get Renault power units, Torro Rosso will either have to go back to year-old Ferrari engines, or take up Honda as a partner, neither of which is better than their status-quo.

As a junior team without the pressure to perform, Torro Rosso taking up Honda engines may not be a disaster.

If anything, it gives Honda even more time to get their act together, while giving Red Bull the option of a sole engine supplier when the power unit specifications change in 2021. In a sport with such variability between regulation changes, having as many options as possible is the name of the game. This also prevents Honda from being driven out of the sport altogether, which would be a huge waste of time, effort and resource.

I’ve avoided this so far just because his feelings are so well documented, but how could we leave out the epicenter of this all, Fernando Alonso? Spare a thought for the double-world champion who walked away from scarlet cars at the very forefront of the year’s championship fight to join McLaren 3 years ago.

He is undoubtedly at the same level of raw human talent and race craft as this season’s title protagonists Hamilton and Vettel, but has had to fight through his peak-years in a car that huffs and puffs just to get through long start-finish straights. If anything, the sport owes it to Alonso to give him a competitive engine, as with every race we’re being robbed of an absolutely brilliant racecar driver.

So with everyone expecting big news from McLaren before the next race in Singapore, we still don’t quite know where the team will go. But if we do end up with a McLaren-Renault team next year, there can only be positives. It writes a new tale in F1 folklore, and adds the possibility of a fourth dimension fighting for podiums until 2021. Now that would be exciting racing.