McLaren have warned Lewis Hamilton to expect heavy promotional work away from the track if he wants McLaren to remain competitive.
The British team isn’t funded by a billionaire backer, nor a large manufacturer such as Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes. The team relies on successful relationships with large sponsors such as Vodafone.
During a McLaren-Mercedes conference call with managing director Jonthan Neale, the topic of Hamilton ‘burning-out’ because of the sponsors demands on him prior to races.
Neale says Hamilton must accept its part of the sport and part of the way McLaren operates.
“We are a commercially-run team, with a fantastic group of partners,” he said. “Vodafone and Mercedes obviously have expectations, and our technical partners all do terrific work, as well.
“We have long partnerships because they work – Exxon Mobil have been with us since 1995, for example. That’s all part of being a well-funded and successful team, and we are renowned for it.”
Neale added that the team aim to balance the situation to ensure their drivers don’t suffer from fatigue, but underlined it was an important aspect of maintaining the teams competitivness.
“We do recognise that the drivers are human beings and that there’s a finite capacity there, so we try to balance it out as best we can – but we don’t have quite the same funding model as Red Bull Racing or Ferrari.
“There has to be some give-and-take. The same is true behind-the-scenes as on the circuit – we have two number one drivers, with two equal sets of obligations. Lewis and Jenson share that burden of responsibility equally.
“We have been able to use, very successfully, Pedro de la Rosa, Gary Paffett and occasionally also Oliver Turvey to lift the commercial burden, and we are putting more capacity in the system to match our partners’ expectations. Yes, it’s a balance, but when you have two world champions in the team and the partners that we have, everybody is going to be clamouring to see them. We’ve got to be mindful of that.”
