The matrix. No, not the sci-fi movie franchise which played to diminishing returns around the turn of the century, but an abstruse management system which abided in similarly futuristic environs at the same time as Keanu Reeves et al were raging against the machines on the big screen. McLaren’s star technical director Adrian Newey disliked the company’s brand new Foster & Partners-designed Technology Centre, feeling it cold and clinical – but he truly despised the so-called ‘matrix management system’ which had been imposed on his technical department.
And, unlike the stars of The Matrix, Newey couldn’t warp the space-time continuum and engage in athletic feats of kung fu to escape this dystopia.
The MP4-17 was conceived as the company was preparing to move into its new factory and the first product of the matrix management regime in which Newey toiled increasingly unhappily before reaching for the eject button a couple of years later. For better and for worse this methodology would prevail at McLaren for almost two decades before Andreas Seidl consigned it to the memory hole in 2020.
“A bit of a clumsy design, certainly. It’s significant that a car which ended up contesting not one but two grand prix seasons should merit little more than a cursory few sentences, less time than Newey spends unpacking the perceived shortcomings of the MTC with its “Orwellian” underground access corridors, its “ordered greyness” and team boss Ron Dennis’s oppressive clear-desk policy.
