This 'support' thread is really rather amusing; most of the posts are actually made by non McLaren fans... don't mind me, carry on...
The thing is Myown, many of the people you say are not McLaren fans were strong McLaren fans (and not only because of Lewis) before the Whitmarsh fiasco. It's just they could see the writing in the wall and hated what they saw. I bet you the majority will be vocally supporting McLaren as they return to the place they should be, fighting at the front.
I can't completely figure the whole Whitmarsh/Button disaster. The obvious I was vocal about as it was unfolding. It was head banging beyond belief. But I always had Whitmarsh down as inept and Button down as a political opportunist. So Button working Whitmarsh if you like. And if that's a correct assessment, the blame has to lie with Whitmarsh not Button, Whitmarsh was the senior figure. But I've thought about this a bit more and I'm not sure Whitmarsh was as hapless as he made himself out to be.
Whitmarsh the smiley. Whitmarsh the nice guy, the joker, the giggler. Did he overplay the hand too much? Because the Whitmarsh he showed to the public wasn't the guy who would go behind his benefactors back. Ron had groomed him for years to take over, then when he got the opportunity, apart from screwing things for McLaren, he tried to stitch Ron up to the point Ron had to get him out. And it took years.
Another point. His relationship with Lewis. It was clear to anyone with any degree of perception that he struggled with Lewis. The false smile shone falser around Lewis. The body language. The undermining comments. Lewis has never said a bad word about Whitmarsh, but Lewis is naive to politicking, though he's learning. Did Whitmarsh bear a grudge against Lewis? Was it resentment from the time Anthony fell out with him? Did he place his own wants/needs/ ambitions/ grudges above McLaren's best interests?
I've recently experienced deceitfulness, and it's an eye opener.
One other point on this that niggles. The way the resources were placed behind Button at the expense of Lewis. A team wouldn't do that on the say so and politicking of the driver. But if the boss told them they had to, then they'd have to. I've read recently, on this topic, that they had Lewis, who could drive round anything and Button , with his narrow window of operation. So they designed the car for Button knowing Lewis would cope. This would be a slower car . And this doesn't sit well with the comments Paddy made about designing a car round Lewis before he was even in F1 ' he just got in the car and drove it ,fast, while the regular drivers were bitching it was undrivable, it gave us the opportunity to design a faster car' . And what did Paddy do. He left.
Just some thoughts there, some musings on the situation.