McLaren CEO Zak Brown believes that the team’s “lack of consistent leadership” across the past half-decade has played a large part in its recent struggles.
McLaren is in the midst of one of the worst spells in its distinguished Formula 1 history.
It has not won a Grand Prix since 2012, has not appeared on the podium since 2014, and in 2018 finished a low-key sixth in the Constructors’ Championship.
During that spell it has undergone several managerial changes, with Martin Whitmarsh departing, Ron Dennis returning and subsequently ousted, Eric Boullier coming and going, while Jost Capito’s stint lasted mere months.
Brown joined in late 2016 as Executive Director and in April this year took on the role of CEO, coinciding with McLaren Group being restructured and split into three divisions.
Gil de Ferran joined as Sporting Director mid-2018, ostensibly as a replacement for Boullier, with Brown accepting that success for McLaren was “years away”, off the back of its low level of performance.
He believes that McLaren now has the right structure in place to rebuild and recover from its difficult campaign.
“Ultimately what got us here this year started five years ago,” he said.
“So this year’s problem is years in the works. My summary of that is that we’ve had a lack of consistent leadership. I don’t point the fingers at any one individual.
“That was a lack of focus because of all the activities that were going on, from the board room down, buyouts, merging of companies, team principles, team principles out, CEOs in, CEOs out so it was just a constant revolving kind of lack of focus.
“I think that’s what created the issue and then what fell out of that is that people didn’t have clear goals and accountability, responsibility, and so ultimately that’s what produced a poor race car this year, it was kind of our structure, our organisation.
“The individual people are extremely talented. We’ve got world championships, we’ve got over 100 people that have been here for over 20 years.
“So they haven’t forgotten how to win we just didn’t have the right infrastructure in place, and that’s what we’ve set out to fix.”
McLaren will enter 2019 with a revised driver line-up of Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz Jr.
An in-depth interview with Sainz Jr. is available in this week's bumper edition of Motorsport Monday.
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