McLaren chief Zak Brown says that the team’s “surprise” underperformance in 2018 was ultimately the trigger for it to re-assess its approach in Formula 1.
McLaren struggled for performance and reliability during its three-year partnership with Honda and ended that relationship in a bid to move back up the grid.
But McLaren continued to lack pace in 2018 amid issues with its MCL33 and took only sixth in the Constructors’ Championship, with most of its points scored in the first four events.
McLaren Group reshuffled its set-up in April while in July Racing Director Eric Boullier was axed, with Gil de Ferran hired in the newly-created role of Sporting Director.
McLaren will also enter 2019 with an all-new driver line-up in the form of Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz Jr.
“I would have preferred to have a good year but of course this year was a surprise to all of us so it did get you to look in the mirror quickly, get really close to the team and make some changes,” said Brown.
“So ideally long term we will have benefited the racing team from this year because we’ve uncovered lots of areas that we’ve had some shortcomings, that ultimately will be a good point because we think we addressed them or we’re on our way to addressing them.
“I think we’re now on the road to recovery as I tell the men and women at McLaren, it’s going to feel good before it looks good. Meaning that they’re doing some great work now but until you see the race car on the track [you don’t know] so I think it kind of feels good inside McLaren.
“Development is going well, teamwork, collaboration, communication, responsibilities, all those things that we fell short of are now going well.
“But until that race car hits the track that’s the ultimate measurement and that’s when everyone will be able to visibly see what type of improvement [has been made] over the winter but I certainly think this year is a low spot, and this era is a low spot, in McLaren history.
“We’re working hard to be on the road to recovery now. But it takes some time.”
Brown believes that having the same power unit as rivals Red Bull and Renault emphasised McLaren’s weak points, having previously not had a benchmark while partnered with Honda.
“I think it was definitely more difficult [from 2015 to 2017] because you know we had challenges those three years and so it’s harder to understand when you’ve got different variables that aren’t performing, where are the areas of weakness,” Brown said.
“So when you get yourself in the situation where you have a clear marker where Red Bull is, so you can take that out of the equation and there’s fewer places to look.
“So I think in that sense it helps that there were two other teams we could directly measure ourselves against and we fell short performing against either of them. So that did help.”
