MOVING ON UP
When McLaren last won a grand prix, the world was a very different place. One Direction sat atop the US album charts. Google Plus still existed. Shares in Facebook were a snip at $23.99 (in August 2020 they reached $303.91). Felix Baumgartner had just demonstrated the thrilling extent of human endeavour by jumping from the edge of space. There was a James Bond film in the cinemas. You could still buy a BlackBerry, and people were. Donald Trump was arguing against a recount in the US election. It was 25 November, 2012.
Third in the constructors’ championship with the spoils of seven race victories jostling for space in its amply stuffed trophy cabinet, and with the feeling that better reliability might have earned Lewis Hamilton or Jenson Button the drivers’ title, McLaren was already in the process of failing. A gearbox breakage in Singapore, caused by sand left over from the casting process, provided the final nudge for Hamilton to sever his ties with the team which had nurtured him since karting. In the design office, work proceeded on the MP4-28, a car which would only demonstrate competitive pace once, at a pre-season test, and then only because elements of the front suspension were accidentally fitted upside down.
Several seasons in the competitive wasteland followed, the result of complacency, hubris, technological over-reach, and out-of-touch leadership. During the French GP weekend of 2018, a British tabloid newspaper published an excoriating exposé of management practices at McLaren,
