The Revenge of Fernando Alonso
As it become clearer that the new Mercedes McLaren is going to be a back of the field marker for at least the first quart of the 2009 season, one has to think of the Revenge of Fernando Alonso.
The story is well known. Alonso and Renault were a powerhouse. They came in and knocked the Schumacher-Ferrari dynasty off their perch. In fact, many pictured Alonso as the rightful heir to the Schumacher legacy. Then Renault got it all wrong. Unwilling to commit to Formula One, Alonso realized he better move to a frontrunner while the going was good. In a fateful move, he picked McLaren Mercedes.
The McLaren team is a historic one. The last 15 years had seen a real bad run, however. With the exception of a few brilliant years in the late 1990s with Mikka Hakkinen, the team has always been either slow and reliable or fast and unreliable. When Alonso came aboard, the team was slow and unreliable.
Through preseason testing, Ron Dennis and team members raved about the ability of Alonso to develop the car. Like innate driving skills, some drivers are able to develop a car while others are not. Alonso clearly is able to and the Mercedes McLaren became a tremendous car. Then the problems started.
The implosion of the McLaren team in 2007 was dramatic and has been hashed over to no end. Who did what? Who new what? Who was favored and so on? It made for great theatre, but resulted in the team throwing away both the team and driver championships in a last quarter of the racing season that will go down in infamy as one of the worst managed team efforts ever. When the yelling and screaming was done, Alonso returned to Renault. The team continued to develop that basic car and Lewis Hamilton won the 2008 Driver’s Championship.
The 2009 season represents the first new non-Alonso influenced car McLaren Mercedes has had to produce. The team appears to have badly missed the mark. To go from the front runner in the field to the back of the pack is an indication the car is a disaster from a design stand point. No less than Norbert Haug has verified the major problems the team faces.
Has McLaren Mercedes lost the season before the first race? One would say yes in a typical season, but this is not a typical season. Everyone has a new car. For all we know, the Ferrari may blow up every race; the Brawn GP car may be very sketchy on reliability and BMW might be really slow. Any assumptions being made about 2009 are complete speculation and that includes whether the McLaren is really as bad as it looks. Still, the comments coming from major players on the team are not very optimistic.
Somewhere, Fernando Alonso must be smiling.
Lemmy