Discussion
Stan the Bat said:
cuprabob said:
Stan the Bat said:
Zak Brown was very unimpressive in that i/v on CH4.
While he is there the team are never going to be improved.
I think the American accent exaggerates the spin content While he is there the team are never going to be improved.
tter isn't he.I also can’t help seeing an American version of Ray Winston whenever he’s spoken to.
Plenty of bile and knowledge after the event for McLaren.
Why not save some for Williams too? Is their situation just “bad luck”, or is it in fact equally poor management of a once great British team whose incredibly successful, driven, flawed leader was replaced by a [insert appropriate politically correct term]?
Why not save some for Williams too? Is their situation just “bad luck”, or is it in fact equally poor management of a once great British team whose incredibly successful, driven, flawed leader was replaced by a [insert appropriate politically correct term]?
I agree that some of the limits to testing (and others like computing cycles) must be contributing to McLaren’s inability to pull out of the dive.
As suggested earlier, these restrictions could be staggered according to your ranking. Failing or new teams could then work their way up and of course be subject to more stringent limits as they improve.
Otherwise, we may well see other teams one day get in a wobble like this and not be able to work their way out.
As suggested earlier, these restrictions could be staggered according to your ranking. Failing or new teams could then work their way up and of course be subject to more stringent limits as they improve.
Otherwise, we may well see other teams one day get in a wobble like this and not be able to work their way out.
I don’t know if anyone else noticed Jonathan Neale briefly interviewed at the track on either C4 or Sky (I flick between as Sky seems too smug lately and today everything was “let’s-promote-our-pal-Jenson-as-a-telly-presenter-day-today” nausea).
I took it as an interesting cameo as I didn’t think he was much of a go-to media person these days, but happy to be corrected. I guess because it’s Silverstone that most of the team would be there?
Anyway, my perception was that his views were straight and direct, ending with something along the lines of, “...we’ve got a lot of work to do, we need to show humility and do our talking on the track.”. Or words closely to that effect.
As the COO of the wider group, likely responsible for the more back office-y but important stuff that makes the whole company tick-tock I thought it interesting that he was also fronting off to the media (multiple voices now) with a perceptibly lesser Brown presence today and with words that effectively come across as ‘we need to publically shut up’. My guess is the dynamic amongst the top couple of layers there is very fluid.
But as I surmised before, Neale looks the only guy who knows which way is up and how to actually, you know, run stuff and his career background is far more credible and what a Sheikh Mohammed and Ojjeh would expect of a senior exec and someone to handle things day to day. Watching the Amazon documentary and seeing the three of them (Brown, Boullier and Neale) talking, meeting and sounding each other out at the start, when hierarchically they were all equals, the body language looked overwhelming. Boullier out of his depth as a ‘suit’, might have had good times at Lotus, but that was more hands on, smaller with lesser expectations, and acting the corporate leader and being in a bigger promotion role stretched his abilities - the Peter Principle. Brown, vaguely disinterested, obviously other things going on, ‘briefly reading the briefing’ even though he’s got a chauffeur, aloof but when the camera is in his face, the media performer clicks in. Neale, the consummate senior exec swiftly assessing credibility of the others, but also aiming to keep the show on the road whilst the owners firm up mandates. And Simon Roberts? Well I’m surprised to see he got promoted within the Racing team setup to COO! Looked deeply uncomfortable presenting even to 20 people. Maybe he impresses in other areas - or he’s cutely been given a stretch position to see if he’s part of the problem, part of the solution, or just landscape.
Someone’s mentioned Williams. A Williams thread would obviously be the better place to talk about them than a McLaren one, but whilst the technical challenges may or may not be similar (aero?), the leadership one and how to unlock breakout in performance and get away from doom, might have similar starting points (both British, both mainly led by guys with singular and determined vision, similar success overall, not engine manufacturers, pre- and post- Newey eras, etc...), their organisational and management issues, I feel, are very different and in the case of Williams a more deeply challenging, and ultimately, an emotional one.
As relative studies, I’d go further: whilst at McLaren the Racing setup may be resolved by internal visions getting clearer, and a heavy restructuring of process and people, with a lot more heads on sticks, the Williams story, when you layer in the Lawrence Stroll position, is far more existential. At Woking a brutal restructuring (like in other industries) could easily see a shed load of people get P45s and special measures come in, performance further dip and yet the Al Thanis and Ojjeh still feel they’ve got overall great assets and to see it through.
Even at 3000 people which isn’t a big company, it’s diversified and there’s enough to fool around with. But at Williams it’s much worse. They’re in the doom loop and its much more precarious. And to have someone like Lawrence Stroll with his $50-200m spend on his boy, and not as a shareholder but as a customer and then stare holes in peoples backs down the pit garage, is deeply threatening. He’s more powerful as a customer and therefore able to bend anyone over the table. A significant shareholder has to behave in a more corporately cooperative style. And often this dilutes the ability to really beat some ass. Therefore someone like Paddy Lowe can look like roadkill to someone like Stroll, and if he so wants, treat him as such. Stroll might have been the only game in town in late 2016, but ultimately may prove a tactical point in a wider survival issue.
The Williams situation, the family exercising just ownership rights, or the family actively running it, I think will become an existential one. The success rate of family endeavours passing down the line isn’t high in the real world. I forget the stats, but everyone knows. It’s like 9% or something. Vanderbilts, Carnegies, Gettys, go down the biological line and the wealth is often squandered, regardless of the “interest upon interest accumulated by widows and idiot sons”. The best schools, keys to daddy’s cars, parties on Long Island all summer tends to kill off certain traits and bully out IQ & EQ in the family gene pool as the years go by. But the 9%, the smart ones, tend to do a Quandt/BMW thing and sit back and let professionals take things on. Stefan Quandt inherited £15bn when his old man died. Disencouraged to turnstile the Munich HQ and start meddling in how the latest M3 was going to look or something he went off and had an alternate career. Was at BCG or something. Sensible. He must have been utterly unmanageable for some poor associate Principal or other - imagine having to performance manage a billionaire 25yo - but smart move. Stay away from the origins of the family wealth!
Business, emotions, head & heart...sometimes these things intersect. McLaren is mainly about restructuring and clearing a lot of dead wood. It’s fixable. Williams is another realm of organisational issue and challenge (to existence).
I took it as an interesting cameo as I didn’t think he was much of a go-to media person these days, but happy to be corrected. I guess because it’s Silverstone that most of the team would be there?
Anyway, my perception was that his views were straight and direct, ending with something along the lines of, “...we’ve got a lot of work to do, we need to show humility and do our talking on the track.”. Or words closely to that effect.
As the COO of the wider group, likely responsible for the more back office-y but important stuff that makes the whole company tick-tock I thought it interesting that he was also fronting off to the media (multiple voices now) with a perceptibly lesser Brown presence today and with words that effectively come across as ‘we need to publically shut up’. My guess is the dynamic amongst the top couple of layers there is very fluid.
But as I surmised before, Neale looks the only guy who knows which way is up and how to actually, you know, run stuff and his career background is far more credible and what a Sheikh Mohammed and Ojjeh would expect of a senior exec and someone to handle things day to day. Watching the Amazon documentary and seeing the three of them (Brown, Boullier and Neale) talking, meeting and sounding each other out at the start, when hierarchically they were all equals, the body language looked overwhelming. Boullier out of his depth as a ‘suit’, might have had good times at Lotus, but that was more hands on, smaller with lesser expectations, and acting the corporate leader and being in a bigger promotion role stretched his abilities - the Peter Principle. Brown, vaguely disinterested, obviously other things going on, ‘briefly reading the briefing’ even though he’s got a chauffeur, aloof but when the camera is in his face, the media performer clicks in. Neale, the consummate senior exec swiftly assessing credibility of the others, but also aiming to keep the show on the road whilst the owners firm up mandates. And Simon Roberts? Well I’m surprised to see he got promoted within the Racing team setup to COO! Looked deeply uncomfortable presenting even to 20 people. Maybe he impresses in other areas - or he’s cutely been given a stretch position to see if he’s part of the problem, part of the solution, or just landscape.
Someone’s mentioned Williams. A Williams thread would obviously be the better place to talk about them than a McLaren one
, but whilst the technical challenges may or may not be similar (aero?), the leadership one and how to unlock breakout in performance and get away from doom, might have similar starting points (both British, both mainly led by guys with singular and determined vision, similar success overall, not engine manufacturers, pre- and post- Newey eras, etc...), their organisational and management issues, I feel, are very different and in the case of Williams a more deeply challenging, and ultimately, an emotional one. As relative studies, I’d go further: whilst at McLaren the Racing setup may be resolved by internal visions getting clearer, and a heavy restructuring of process and people, with a lot more heads on sticks, the Williams story, when you layer in the Lawrence Stroll position, is far more existential. At Woking a brutal restructuring (like in other industries) could easily see a shed load of people get P45s and special measures come in, performance further dip and yet the Al Thanis and Ojjeh still feel they’ve got overall great assets and to see it through.
Even at 3000 people which isn’t a big company, it’s diversified and there’s enough to fool around with. But at Williams it’s much worse. They’re in the doom loop and its much more precarious. And to have someone like Lawrence Stroll with his $50-200m spend on his boy, and not as a shareholder but as a customer and then stare holes in peoples backs down the pit garage, is deeply threatening. He’s more powerful as a customer and therefore able to bend anyone over the table. A significant shareholder has to behave in a more corporately cooperative style. And often this dilutes the ability to really beat some ass. Therefore someone like Paddy Lowe can look like roadkill to someone like Stroll, and if he so wants, treat him as such. Stroll might have been the only game in town in late 2016, but ultimately may prove a tactical point in a wider survival issue.
The Williams situation, the family exercising just ownership rights, or the family actively running it, I think will become an existential one. The success rate of family endeavours passing down the line isn’t high in the real world. I forget the stats, but everyone knows. It’s like 9% or something. Vanderbilts, Carnegies, Gettys, go down the biological line and the wealth is often squandered, regardless of the “interest upon interest accumulated by widows and idiot sons”. The best schools, keys to daddy’s cars, parties on Long Island all summer tends to kill off certain traits and bully out IQ & EQ in the family gene pool as the years go by. But the 9%, the smart ones, tend to do a Quandt/BMW thing and sit back and let professionals take things on. Stefan Quandt inherited £15bn when his old man died. Disencouraged to turnstile the Munich HQ and start meddling in how the latest M3 was going to look or something he went off and had an alternate career. Was at BCG or something. Sensible. He must have been utterly unmanageable for some poor associate Principal or other - imagine having to performance manage a billionaire 25yo - but smart move. Stay away from the origins of the family wealth!
Business, emotions, head & heart...sometimes these things intersect. McLaren is mainly about restructuring and clearing a lot of dead wood. It’s fixable. Williams is another realm of organisational issue and challenge (to existence).
Edited by tigerkoi on Sunday 8th July 19:29
It's such a shame to see two of the oldest British names going this way, perhaps McLaren and Williams should team up together to develop an awesome chassis/aero package and then once they get it performing at a similar level to Merc and Ferrari go their own ways to further develop it, they both seem to have lost their way so badly it's going to need some great people a lot of development and a lot of cash to get any decent performance back.
tigerkoi said:
McLaren is mainly about restructuring and clearing a lot of dead wood. It’s fixable. Williams is another realm of organisational issue and challenge (to existence).
I'd argue it's a similar realm of dysfunction, but with the added layer of probably intractible family issues (maybe we're agreeing?). Wouldn't necessarily call it existential - Sauber, Torro Rosso, Force India and the others there to make up the numbers are still around despite having been in another world from the top three for...well, effectively forever.
EddyP said:
It's such a shame to see two of the oldest British names going this way, perhaps McLaren and Williams should team up together to develop an awesome chassis/aero package and then once they get it performing at a similar level to Merc and Ferrari go their own ways to further develop it, they both seem to have lost their way so badly it's going to need some great people a lot of development and a lot of cash to get any decent performance back.
I can just image it...Zak Brown: "But Suppose the Child Inherited My Beauty and Your Brains?"
dr_gn said:
tigerkoi said:
McLaren is mainly about restructuring and clearing a lot of dead wood. It’s fixable. Williams is another realm of organisational issue and challenge (to existence).
I'd argue it's a similar realm of dysfunction, but with the added layer of probably intractible family issues (maybe we're agreeing?). Wouldn't necessarily call it existential - Sauber, Torro Rosso, Force India and the others there to make up the numbers are still around despite having been in another world from the top three for...well, effectively forever.
But why I consider it existential is because of the intractable family issues - obviously viewing from the outside but taking in a lot of what I’ve heard and read and seen - and to a degree in relation to the other sorts of teams you suggest.
On the family point: if you have Frank, incredible in many ways as he is, saying, “I’m a racer, only this makes me happy”, then cutting through it, the company, the concern, the racing team is in the family, come what may, until the day he passes away. He’ll never sell it. And in the meantime the Adam Parr’s come and go, no new blood or thinking (right at the top) and taking money off people like Stroll becomes a strategy and maybe one that bleeds you out.
Many have a view on Claire, but if Frank was manifestly against anyone else running his baby then he had zero choice between two of his kids. Seeing Jonathan Williams in that documentary made me think, I feel a little sorry for the (obviously sensitive) soul, but he did come across as someone who had his lunch money nicked at school and whilst you could imagine him running a library, never a hard charging racing outfit and all that that entails.
So you’ve got Claire. I’m waiting for a really smart F1 journo to get off their arse and stop the boring speculating on the daily stories and instead seek out Patrick Head and ask him in a proper interview, “...and do you think Claire should run Williams, and if not what should happen to the company for it to survive and thrive”. Of course, Head would be unlikely to say anything negative to those who he was at once very close to, and likely to decline such an interview, but what do you think he’d say? A logical, clever, agressive but honest guy like him? You know.
There are many women who run some of the absolute biggest companies in the world and often can easily armwrestle the most senior men execs out of anything. Ginny Rometty, Meg Whitman, the list goes on. Deeply impressive people in person and they’ve done it in male dominated industries. So I like to think sexism is a non-point. But Claire ain’t got those skills. She’s learnt on the job and growing up in an environment where Keke or Nigel were popping in the family home on Christmas Eve is almost counter productive when you’ve got to take a chainsaw to things that are wrong.
So it becomes existential. Because in a way everyone is waiting to see what happens when Frank isn’t around. Or whether he is around much longer and the bleeding is exacerbated to the point that bigger decisions need to be made and he still won’t sanction them? The companies ultimate progress is stymied by the inability of the founder to day to day lead the firm and is in effect run by proxy by a loyal daughter who will only execute if it’s within his wishes. There’s tomorrow of course, but at some point that’s an existential situation.
On Sauber, I can’t comment as I really don’t know the firm or framework, or indeed much beyond the history and cursory knowledge of Peter and their other Motorsport successes and failures.
Toro Rosso? Well they’re just a little subsidiary of a conglomerate that does $8bn in revenue. Even if Mateschitz dies, so what? It’s a brand, a company that he doesn’t own more than 49% of. They publish their own magazines. Toro Rosso is an accounting frippery on the overall books but in terms of the wider brand they provide a huge supporting purpose (to the main F1 team’s ultimate performance targets). The only worry you’d have as an employee at Toro Rosso is what would be your new F1 employers name if Red Bull were to sell. But there’s no real concerns there.
Force India. Well, like Mallya says, if someone has deep enough pockets and they’re serious he’d discuss it with his partners and maybe they’d sell. Of course some of that is PR bluster, but if you peer more deeply, FI seems to be a firm that a) the owner/s don’t meddle in much day to day and trust the guys to do their job, and b) comes across as a place where the racing guys are just doing that, their job, and by and large ticking along. But FI looks a tangible asset, but not one that’s overreached itself with other goals, and is a decent sized chunk that there are many out there who’d consider it if it was for sale. A tight little racing outfit with easily defined borders around what it does and to what level it plays.
McLaren and Williams are teams defined by their legacy and their winning days. And therefore expectations of sponsors, etc. So the current fall in performance only then triggers what has been labelled by their own people as ‘a crisis’, whatever the ultimate place to where that leads each firm. But the other outfits are just currently smaller teams that never get to the top step (notwithstanding their original outfits history) with corresponding targets and realities. And so they bounce along year to year or owner to owner.
Bob Fernley shouldn’t be worried about FIs sudden death. United Breweries is still listed on the BSE and lager is still sold. Kingfisher Airlines is dead though, but flying planes is a whole other ballgame, where the stakes are massive and problems in any part of the chain can and will kill you, and the rapidity of failure is like an aneurysm. Pan Am - Lockerbie in ‘88. Huge body blow but survivable. Gulf War triggered in August ‘90, fuel prices go through the roof. Pan Am file for Chapter 11 on January 8th, ‘91. Then it was just a managed death. Another ballgame, airlines. But a tight - little - self contained Formula 1 team with no strings? Easy sell.
Jonesy23 said:
You make the assumption the F1 team would be considered significant going forward. From current evidence the engineering business is where the effort is.
Worst case for both McLaren and Williams they close the racing operation and move on with the rest.
Hi there, apologies if I’ve got wires crossed, but not sure I do assume that! If you’re asking me...Worst case for both McLaren and Williams they close the racing operation and move on with the rest.
McLaren: I do mention they are diversified- deep within my lengthy posts! - and whilst I think their “crisis” is very relative, their structure which looks classically business partite, with the three or so BUs and the Group COO in the Centre holding all the functional and structural back office stuff is great for a) killing off, or carving out, or indeed starting, a business unit if strategy changes and b) they’ve already shown ability to start a new successful business line, so you’d have to believe that hard headed owners - which I think the Al Thanis and Ojjeh are - would also kill something if it proved to be gangrenous to the whole. You’d have to.
You diversify if you want to have a strategy that allows you to be flexible to shrink or grow as times change, and with the guys in question if it came to it, they’d kill the team. But that’s very, very, very, unlikely. Funnily enough I do think that if they thought genuinely they were years off in F1, then why not play around in some other series, expand the racing brand and in places like the States, watch what that does to wider Group profits as more supercars are sold or more Applied Technology consultancy is sold ....?
Williams. Well the indicative issue (and assumption?) is that the Ltd is called “Williams Grand Prix Engineering” and it’s own website says we “...exist purely to race in the top echelons of motor racing...”. When you see they sold Hybrid efforts off to GKN and things like that it’s hard to make any assumptions beyond, racing is the be all and end all, and they’re not best placed to rely on much else if things come to it, and nor are they planning for the day! The ‘rest’, Heritage etc, doesn’t look like it’d pay for the operational bills. Scratch below and it all looks very much Williams Martini Racing with the whole management structure all about the racing team with the key racing personnel listed and Mike O’Driscoll. Advanced Engineering could very well be the companies future, but at c.£10m rev and a management structure that currently is all and only about the F1 team then they’re not ready for a really rainy day. The acorn needs to be a lot bigger first. Blowups like ARM that spin out tend to be few and far between and also start on very solid ground.
Also, with Williams, to reiterate, what they do next, like Engineering, maybe, it’s bound up in what I said earlier. Racing is organic to Frank, the family name, even if he has other shareholders to appease.
Love to hear another more enlighted view if it’s out there.
I know Eddie Jordan is a bit of a court jester but his interview with Zak Brown was revealing not so much for what was said as the look on Brown's face.
I felt the PR friendliness and BS hyperbole all dropped in that moment. I don't know the guy, but he looked in that moment like he wanted to go back to the motorhome and rip everyone in there to shreds. Sadly that approach is not going to get them back to the top and is likely to keep them in a rut.
Although he gets flack, Arrivabene apparently does a great job of motivating the Ferrari guys (this carries back to the Todt/Schumacher era when MS refused to ever publicly blame the team even after some monumental f*** ups) and clearly a similar approach also works at Mercedes, a very well organised and cohesive team by any measure.
I felt the PR friendliness and BS hyperbole all dropped in that moment. I don't know the guy, but he looked in that moment like he wanted to go back to the motorhome and rip everyone in there to shreds. Sadly that approach is not going to get them back to the top and is likely to keep them in a rut.
Although he gets flack, Arrivabene apparently does a great job of motivating the Ferrari guys (this carries back to the Todt/Schumacher era when MS refused to ever publicly blame the team even after some monumental f*** ups) and clearly a similar approach also works at Mercedes, a very well organised and cohesive team by any measure.
Edited by cgt2 on Sunday 8th July 23:10
cgt2 said:
I know Eddie Jordan is a bit of a court jester
Many on here deride him, but he's one of the very, very few people who've raced, built and owned teams in the lower formulae before entering - and winning - in F1. Then he got out at the right time and added to his fortune. Jordan's got more motor racing knowledge in his little finger than all the haters on here put together. "FTB" as he'd probably say.
dr_gn said:
cgt2 said:
I know Eddie Jordan is a bit of a court jester
Many on here deride him, but he's one of the very, very few people who've raced, built and owned teams in the lower formulae before entering - and winning - in F1. Then he got out at the right time and added to his fortune. Jordan's got more motor racing knowledge in his little finger than all the haters on here put together. "FTB" as he'd probably say.
So just take EJ with a pinch of salt. Along with his continued relevance.
I think F1 of 20 years ago was a very different thing to the corporate entity it is now. EJ was very much looked after by Bernie who I'm pretty sure got him his engine deal with Honda.
You have to wonder how the freewheeling bonkers style he has (not that I mind it, it is amusing) would last in the highly structured business environment of today.
You have to wonder how the freewheeling bonkers style he has (not that I mind it, it is amusing) would last in the highly structured business environment of today.
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