Can Mclaren win championships with Renault?

[Nitrodaze]

Mclaren dropped their very promising project with Honda for Renault engines with the reason given being that they are more likely to win races with the Renault engine at least than the then very buggy Honda engines. As it turned out, the Mclaren chassis was not as good as they proclaimed it was. The packaging of the chassis has had all manner of associated failures which has resulted in poor performances with a Renault engine that Redbull has used to win four races.

The benchmark for Mclaren was Redbull with a Renault engine and they have fallen well short of the mark. But there is a new regulation in 2019, which gives Mclaren a chance of a clean slate. If they can get round their design challenges and somehow put together a highly competitive chassis, the question is can they be a championship contender with the Renault engine?

One popular argument is that, if Redbull can win four titles with a Renault engine, why not Mclaren. There however, is one small difference in the context of both teams, Redbull was not competing with an aspiring works Renault team. Mclaren would be required to beat the works Renault team before it can defeat any other team for the title. The current rule require manufacturing teams to provide the same engine it uses to their customer teams. Hence Mclaren would be racing Renault with equivalent engine in both cars; in theory.

Which leaves us with two related questions, Can Mclaren beat Renault with a Renault engine? Can the Renault engine catch up to the Mercedes and Ferrari engines?

One could argue that Renault are on the F1 paddock with an aspiration to win the constructors title. To do that they would need to build a championship winning engine and chassis at some point. Which implies that there is a slim chance that Mclaren may have access to a championship winning engine at some point in the future.

With this hypothesis, what do you think, are they likely to win a championship with a Renault engine against a Renault team with Ricciado in one of their cars.

[Zico]

I hope I'm wrong but it doesn't look very likely for either Renault or McLaren to be competitive again any time soon.

Renault simply dont have the same budget as Merc and Ferrari... and with the Honda money also gone, McLaren have a huge financial deficit for F1 as well as being engine customers once again.

I suspect the Honda engine will overtake Renault next year.. if it hasn't already done so.

Meanwhile Red Bull with Honda money?.. I wonder how much higher their development budget is now? A sobering thought..

[zako85]

McLaren started its long decline in 2013, where during the transition from 2012 to 2013, it went from hero to zero (McLaren was arguably the dominant car at the end of the 2012 season). The 2012 car reached the end of its development potential they said, despite many calls to return the 2012 car in mid-2013 season, so bad the 2013 McLaren design was. Then in 2014, McLaren went down even more, scoring zero podiums despite using the dominant Mercedes engine. Mercedes stopped sharing information with them, they said. Then they moved onto the Honda engine and had three horrible seasons as the backmarkers and F1's laughing stock. They blamed it on the Honda engine and then passed it onto Toro Rosso (who are now a solid mid-field team). Now in 2018, they use the Renault engine and if it wasn't for Force India's transfer of ownership, McLaren still would have been only in the the seventh constructors place right now.

So what should we conclude? We have seen six years of failures for McLaren. Why would we expect better for them in 2018?

PS: sorry I meant 2019 there.

[Firstgear]

I can think of 100 million reasons why McLaren are still struggling.

[Jag_Warrior]

I believe that McLaren will turn it around and be competitive again well before Williams. But I don't think that the power unit supplier is the problem in either case. I think that both teams have some serious organizational and systemic problems that must be overcome. McLaren seems to still have some heavy funding backing them up, along with better management (I didn't say good, just better), so that's the only reason I think they'll find relative improvement.

Both teams have suffered a major exodus of talent over the years too. That's something that I wish the racing press would tell us more about.

[Nitrodaze]

I believe that McLaren will turn it around and be competitive again well before Williams. But I don't think that the power unit supplier is the problem in either case. I think that both teams have some serious organizational and systemic problems that must be overcome. McLaren seems to still have some heavy funding backing them up, along with better management (I didn't say good, just better), so that's the only reason I think they'll find relative improvement.

Both teams have suffered a major exodus of talent over the years too. That's something that I wish the racing press would tell us more about.

I think there is a good chance that they would. This is a great opportunity for Zak Brown to stamp his name into Mclaren's history rather than a foot note of it. He has a chance to make the the team into his philosophical approach to racing and become to Mclaren like Elon Musk was to Tesla. The problem elements in Mclaren are gone and Mclaren is starting with a clean slate. Bringing in new blood and developing a new mentality within the team.

If Zak can bring everyone on board is vision for the team, l see no reason why Mclaren cannot find its way back to the sharp end of the grid. Zak Brown simply needs to fill the boots of his predecessor convincingly before any real progress would happen. I think from, what l have seen of him, that he should be able to do that without problems.

[Jag_Warrior]

I'm a big Zak Brown fan. I was hoping that he'd take over Champ Car way back when. Then I was hoping that he'd take over F1 when Bernie was sorta/kinda looking for a successor. On the sponsorship and marketing fronts, he was/is a genius. And he seems to have excellent organizational and people skills. In short, if Zak Brown can't get McLaren turned around, then it's probably headed the way of Williams: a legacy team with no direction.

I think he'll do it though.

[Albo]

As much as I would like to see McLaren back in the front row, I dont see it coming anytime soon. But not with Sainz and Norris. McLaren has been ruining these young promising drivers for nearly 10 years (Hamilton is only exception here), just look at Vandoorne, dominant in GP2 and GP3, Perez was there, didnt work out. Kovalainen (altought not so promising) went downhill from McLaren. K-Mag was there, didnt work out either. And the reliability of the car... as far as i have followed and watched from the early 90's has had so much reliability issues, they could have won much more.

But yeah, I would love to see McLaren to rise up. But it needs a lot of work. Maybe not with Renault engine, but do they have much other options at this moment?

[N4D13]

As much as I would like to see McLaren back in the front row, I dont see it coming anytime soon. But not with Sainz and Norris. McLaren has been ruining these young promising drivers for nearly 10 years (Hamilton is only exception here), just look at Vandoorne, dominant in GP2 and GP3, Perez was there, didnt work out. Kovalainen (altought not so promising) went downhill from McLaren. K-Mag was there, didnt work out either. And the reliability of the car... as far as i have followed and watched from the early 90's has had so much reliability issues, they could have won much more.

But yeah, I would love to see McLaren to rise up. But it needs a lot of work. Maybe not with Renault engine, but do they have much other options at this moment?
I think Sainz is an extremely solid driver - he was a match for Verstappen when both were in Toro Rosso, but had an awful lot of mechanical DNFs whereas his teammate didn't get any. He was slightly outperformed by Hülkenberg in Renault last season, but the Hulk is regarded as one of the best drivers in the grid. Now Norris is an unknown quantity, that's obvious, but Sainz has proven to be fast and consistent.

That said, no one can be reasonably expected to step in Alonso's shoes and deliver the same level of performance, except from Lewis Hamilton when he's at top form. So of course they won't have an exceptional driver to make up for a slow car like they've had for the last four years.

[harsha]

As much as I would love for Mclaren to be competitive again, It still remains a pipedream as of now. They need to find an engine manufacturer having the ability and the money to take on the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari for that to happen.

[Mia 01]

Agree with th above writer, can´t see them winning champions in the near future.

[Nitrodaze]

James Key is set to move to Mclaren in 2019. And they have a hungry young driver lineup going into 2020. I think all the signs suggest that Mclaren is on the mend. But this is typically a very long and unpredictable road. But l think they would succeed if they take time to properly learn from their mistakes. Hence, it would be a mistake to discount the multiple constructors world champion.

[N4D13]

I think getting Seidl is a masterstroke by Brown. Seidl is hugely rated by most folks in motorsport. Brown certainly is getting a very strong team together - maybe the only person I'm not so sure about is James Key, but the other names he's poached are top notch.

[Nitrodaze]

I think getting Seidl is a masterstroke by Brown. Seidl is hugely rated by most folks in motorsport. Brown certainly is getting a very strong team together - maybe the only person I'm not so sure about is James Key, but the other names he's poached are top notch.

I think James Key needs a team like Mclaren to properly flourish unencumbered as a designer. You have to remember that he designed Torro Rosso chassis that outperformed the senior team's chassis in 2016 and 17. I think he would turn out to be a revelation when he gets to work on the Mclaren 2020 chassis. He has missed the window to influence the fundamental design of the 2019 car. But he could help steer its evolution through the 2019 season.

My gut feeling is that Keys could turn out to be the next best designer after Newey. Mclaren is definitely on a good path, we just need someone to tell the Mclaren board to not f**k it up by interfering and meddling with the operations.

[Bagwan]

Mac isn't traditionally a "high rake" design car , and thus , should be able to move up with the new regs .
They haven't forgotten how to put it all together .
And , they believe they know where they screwed up .

The same goes for team Willy .