- 15 Mar 13, 19:01#349822All the Button fans on here are decent, its at other places that Jenson fan tends to equal Hamilton hater. I dont feel any need to apologise to McLaren fans as I am as much a McLaren fan as anyone else, I will not however blindly praise a team or argue aggressively or in a bullying manner when someone has valid points against them. Rons McLaren although flawed and rather eccentric has always stood for something above just a team. Ron is special and his cleverness brought mcLaren where all the other garagistas have folded, except maybe Sauber and Frank Williams still hanging on. But Ron saw off Williams in the end though Williams always had more 'class' ( I hate that word)
Only someone like Ron would have had the balls to bring Hamilton in to this game, only Ron could have brought in Mercedes and extracted the best deal ever out of them for so long.
And the idea of the British Ferrari is an example of what the British car industry should have evolved towards instead of just rolling over.
Howeve its not Rons McLaren anymore, its Whitmarshs McLaren and Ron is just a shareholder like the others waiting for their dividends. Rons done F1, whats a few wins or even a WC, old hat, he has much bigger grander projects now, and the F1 business is rotten to the core and ridden with politics as he found out in 2007 when he ran wrongside of Max and the establishment. All the fixing and special deals and partisanship, cost cutting deals, customer engines, cost reduction deals, Red Bull, Ferrari, payoffs, brown envelopes, assurances, Fota, breakaways etc, its not a level playing field.
He is on the road car dream, massively invested and so far not doing as it should. Why? Rons noble and uncompromising need to be the best. the MPC-12c - fantastic bit of engineering, probably better than the 458, however it has been spanked by the 458 everywhere sales wise, because the 458 is leary and pretty and not just clinically good. These 200k sportscars are where the profits are, because the margins are huge. but Ferrari are in there and wont budge. So we now have to move up to the 1mill sportscar space - the P1, up against.... guess what Ferrari have sneaked one out again - the Laferrari. The last thing Ron needs now is the drain of the F1 side, but he needs the F1 side to at least be around to lend the heritage to the sportscars to at least have a chance against Ferrari, and now Merc.
Some say the McLaren F1 team has rich shareholders and so all we be well.. Come again? shareholders have already put money in and now want returns, If they put more money in Ron has to face the risk of losing controlling shareholding so thats not so easy.
Investors in the road car company are there, some of that money was used to buy the second factory at MTC from McLaren which is where a big part of their profit came from last year, but that was draw in dividends by the groups shareholders.
So until the road cars start doing as well as they really should be doing in an ideal world where buyers buy the best engineered and meticulously assembled sportscars ever instead of emotive and flashy red ones, the F1 team must support itself and thats where Rons gambled on Whitmarsh and his corporate ideas and reduction of carbon footprints etc.
So to cut a long story short the F1 team is Whitmarshs job and he has screwed it to death. I wish Ron could come back and we could go back to older days but thats just romantic and its not gonna happen. What next I don't know but my profession involves knowing what has potential to give you a return and I wouldnt go anywhere near Whitmarshs McLaren (not that they'd let me anyhow lol)
I hope Ron starts making a big profit on the road cars real soon and increases sales and then kicks Whitmarshs butt out and installs a young guy like Horner who knows Sports and not arse kissing in the hospitality tent. Floating the company like Williams did is not an option at the moment, even F1 itself is scared of a flop at present so what chance McLaren?
Selling out to a car maker like Merc would have been ideal but they would have grabbed control and I suspect Ron will rather see the whole company fold first.
Whitmarsh has shot his bolt and things are gonna be changing way before the end of the year
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