McLaren launch: Q&A with Martin Whitmarsh

Following on from the ‘official launch’ of the MP4-27 David Croft greets Martin Whitmarsh to the stage, who has come from talking to the International TV media whilst Jenson and Lewis gave their thoughts and answers on the MP4-27. David starts by introducing Martin, and asking him to share his views on the car that sits behind him.

“It looks beautiful. I should probably pull these chairs away, stop hiding it! But no, it looks beautiful at the moment, but cars really do look beautiful if they win races. And, you know,
The beauty is more than skin deep. I think there’s tremendous engineering underneath. A lot of thought has gone into this car and, really, refinement. I’m sure it will look different when it gets to Australia. That’s the nature offer Formula 1 these days, we’re constantly evolving the product, but I think it’s nice, when you’re going to have to stand around a car for quite a long period of your life during a year, if it looks good at the outset that helps us.”

David then moves to Jenson’s and Lewis’ earlier shared goal; to win a Championship:

“Well, yeah, I’m sure it’s no surprise to everyone here that our goal is to win two world
Championships this year. That’s what we exist to do. That’s what we try to do every year. We don’t always succeed. It’s a very challenging, competitive series and, we are there or thereabouts. We don’t like losing. Coming second the last two years has had its frustrations. You know, we’re proud of some great moments and some create victories in those years but ultimately we want to win and we want to win world championships. So, you know, we’re very fortunate. We’ve got two great racing drivers. They’re good on the stage here as well but they’re also good in the car, they’re good on the track. They’re fearsome competitors. I mean I think anyone can detect the chemistry, they have a great relationship, but they want to beat each other very badly, but in a very positive way. And I think that spurs them on, it spurs the team on.”

“They talked about the genius that we have and the genius that we have in the team. Then we’re very fortunate, we’ve got a very strong team. Some of them will be on the stage later and they can talk to you in a more informed way about the car, but I think it’s important that they work, as they have said, with the drivers. It’s important we listen to
them, it’s important they listen to us as well, but I think it’s important as a team that we all listen to one another. We all have views and opinions; some of the team members are better informed than others; but I think we’ve all got the passion, the desire to win, and I think that, you know, that comes across for anyone, I think, who spends team in this organisation. We expect to win; we have that burning passion to do so. And we know that that’s a combination of brilliant team work, great people, inspiration, hard work, dedication, discipline, attention to detail, all those things which are very much part of McLaren DNA, that’s what you need to win in Formula 1 today.”

Before heading to the floor and open questions to the media, David asks Martin about the new ventures and challenges that lie ahead for the 2012 Formula 1 season – six F1 World Champions on the Grid, a new race in North America and the DRS and KERS systems evolutions. Ultimately, how close is the grid going to be in 2012 between the top teams [of Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes AMG F1].

“It will be close. It’s a massively competitive championship these days. There’s no doubt about that. No one, in my view, is going to run away with this victory, not us, not anyone else. I think six champions is great for the sport. I think look at the last two world championships, we’ve come second in both of them, but they’ve been great championships, they’ve been exiting. I think development of the DRS that you mentioned, KERS. In fairness, Pirelli contributed a lot to the spectacle. So for a few years I think people were a little bit worried - they recognised Formula 1 was the pinnacle of motor sport, it was the most technically advanced, the best drivers in the world, the best teams, but they were a little bit concerned about the spectacle and the show, but I think the last two seasons have been, you know, full of drama, fantastic overtaking, great races, you know, and just a great television spectacle. So we can always make it better. The sport sometimes is a little bit inward looking, a little bit introvert. It doesn’t always do the best job of promoting itself. We have perhaps too much cynicism in our sport because it truly is — you know, there are — Formula 1 and soccer are the only true world sports. They’re the only two. And we can make this sport a lot bigger and a lot better. And it’s sometimes a challenge for teams to work together, as we know, because we’re trying to compete, we’re trying to beat each other on a Sunday afternoon, but we’re learning slowly, not always as quickly as any of us would like, but I think we’re in for an exciting season.”

David Croft finally thanks Martin, exclaiming we will “certainly keep our fingers crossed that that will be the case”. The media floor is then opened to questions.
Below are a highlight of what I consider to be some of the best questions, which are directed to Martin Whitmarsh, and other members of the McLaren Team Management who take to the stage, Sam Michael, Tim Goss and Paddy Lowe.

QUESTION FROM THE AUDIENCE (to Martin): “Martin, you were talking about strength in depth of engineering before. This winter you’ve been selected by other teams as a place to enlist a lot of your people. How much of an impact has that had or can you soak up that kind of loss? It’s a big numbers of people, isn’t it?”

MARTIN WHITMARSH replies: “Not big numbers in the total sum of it but we have lost some people. Our people are attractive to our competitors. That’s a compliment. It might be a frustration when it happens, but it’s a compliment; it means we’ve got good people, what we’re doing and how we work. I think we’re quieter about how we go about our recruitment, so we do, of course, recruit very good graduate engineers that we develop and train within our business, but we also periodically dip into some other teams, and I think at least one of them will be on stage a bit later. So, you know, I think we are selective generally. Certainly on the engineering side we’ve recruited from some of our competitors. We haven’t seen the purpose in advertising that fact, we just go about it quietly. So the fact is we have a great engineering team. We’re not planning on failing, and we’re certainly not going to fail as a consequence of lack of depth in engineering. We’ve great engineers. We’ve got as many as we need to get the job done. Providing we work hard, providing we’re smart, provided we make the right decisions, we’ll get the job done this year.”

QUESTION FROM THE AUDIENCE (Ian Parkes to Martin Whitmarsh): “Obviously it goes without saying that we’re not going to know how good this car is until it gets out on track over the next three tests but, compared to the wrong direction taken at the start of the last season, is there quiet confidence within the team that you have got it right this year?”

MARTIN WHITMARSH replies: “Well, firstly, we won’t really know until Australia qualifying, you know, through the practice and testing sessions that we have in front of us we embarked on a whole range of programmes, but turning to the real point we had, by anyone’s standards, and McLaren’s standards, an abysmal winter testing session last year, where we didn’t have reliability or pace, and I think it was really a tribute to a fantastic team, work and everyone within the organisation to respond that, and in fact we arrived in Australia in reasonable competitive position, which I think surprised a lot of people. But it was a relatively stressful process, so I’d be much happier to be not fighting those sorts of issues. And I think we’ve put a lot of work into this car and we don’t think we’re going to have a repeat of last winter.”

The sponsor Vodafone then gets their (conveniently placed) question to Martin, where rear blown diffusers are discussed briefly, and questions then turn back to the media floor.

QUESTION FROM THE AUDIENCE (to Martin): “After last year and the problems you had in testing, have you been more conservative this year? Have you held back a bit, do you think, or have you been able to go gung ho, like you’d like to?”

MARTIN WHITMARSH replies: “I don’t believe we’ve been inherently conservative. Inevitably, there are creative brains out there that seek to find the eureka moment that is going to find a second’s worth of performance. Sadly, in Formula 1, to some extent those eureka moments of seconds of performance increment are very limited and, you know,
nowadays Formula 1 is about refining every single detail part, so a one or two per cent performance differentiation from the front to almost to the back of the grid is made up of tiny, tiny fractions of performance increments from just about every component within the car, every system, but if you come up with something which is performance, you’re going to chase it.”

“I think, providing we have a good and competitive start to the year, then there’s no doubt we’ll be in there for the fight for the championship at the end.”

We then move through a series of non-car launch questions, before returning to the question of how the MP4-27 will adapt to some of the new regulations for 2012, as well as how the car was designed to suit the data collected from the 2011 Formula 1 Season.

One Question from the audience to Martin focuses on the struggles McLaren had with the Pirelli tyres in 2011, how there were “artificial” elements involved in the season, and how it may have influenced their designs / plans for 2012.

MARTIN WHITMARSH replies: “I think we often within the sport view this from a very purist perception and we don’t like these artificial elements - it’s the same argument, people don’t like DRS — and I can understand and respect that, but I think we have to accept that, you know, we are in the entertainment business, we have to make the show. It is deeply frustrating for me a few times last year, when we were on the wrong tyre, or on the right tyre at the wrong time, and you know it makes it more challenging for the pit wall and for the drivers, but, personally, I think it added to the show. But we don’t know yet, because we haven’t tested the Pirelli tyres [in 20120], but the probability is that the gap between them will be narrowed. So the purists will prefer it. I wonder, though, whether it will be to the detriment of the show.”

QUESTION FROM THE AUDIENCE: “Martin, you said that we wouldn’t see the full car until Australia. One, is it true of all the teams, two, are we going to see sandbagging and grandstanding, and three, does McLaren do any sandbagging or grandstanding?”

MARTIN WHITMARSH replies: “All the teams will develop their cars, I’m sure, so the car that’s unveiled as they pull the cloth back will not be the car that’s being used in Q1 in Australia, and that’s a fact. There will be a greater evolution in some teams than others I would imagine.”

“Is there grandstanding and sandbagging? Yes. Do all of the teams do it? To varying degrees. We don’t go out of our way to grandstand; we’ve got a long-term serious programme. I know, you know, inevitably we see it every year, a team that may be on the point of a new sponsorship deal that appears to be very quick in some tests and then suddenly doesn’t look quite so quick when it gets to the first race. It is so easy. The weight sensitivity, as I think most of you know, of Formula 1 cars, you can make a car artificially a second or two quicker if you need to. We don’t do any of that. We could be accused of sandbagging in that we try to hold back a little bit, but again, not as a real conscious -
We don’t try and be too clever on ourselves. I think really testing for us is data gathering, it’s allowing our engineers to start to work with the drivers, understand the car, feedback information here so that we can do a better job of developing the car in the future, and allow the driver and the race engineers to be in a position that they can optimise it at the right time, which isn’t during the winter tests, it’s when we get to Q1 in Australia.”

David Croft and Martin Whitmarsh then discuss one last question focusing around the FOTA happenings of the off season, before Jonathan Neale (Managing Director, McLaren Racing) and Sam Michael (Sporting Director) are invited to the stage.

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