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McLaren’s Formula 1 constructors’ title has defied its own logic – or at least the logic of previous leadership.
A decade ago, McLaren switched from its long-term Mercedes engine supply to a works Honda deal in the belief that such a partnership was essential for Formula 1’s V6 turbo-hybrid era. Ron Dennis was convinced about that. But we all know how badly it went.
As recently as 2018, though, then-McLaren racing director Eric Boullier said winning a title as a customer was not possible. The problem was at that time McLaren was out of its failed Honda era, early into a Renault stop-gap customer deal, and with no new works deal on the horizon.
McLaren has changed since then. F1’s V6 turbo-hybrid era has changed since then. And McLaren’s 2024 success, in its fourth season back as a Mercedes customer again, shows exactly why CEO Zak Brown and team principal Andrea Stella believed that continuing to bang the ‘we need to be a works team’ drum would just be an “excuse”.
“Certainly, there might have been a situation over the last 10 years in which HPP had a little extra which they were deploying,” Stella told The Race earlier this year.
“But except for some of these Q3 special modes or something, Mercedes and Red Bull won championships and created to some extent a dominance because they did a good job as a chassis team.
“OK, clearly, you need a very competitive power unit. But the differentiation compared to the teams that had the same power unit was in the quality of the work that was done on the chassis side.
“This conviction that you need to be a works team, for me it’s more of an excuse than a technical fact.”
Although correlation does not necessarily equal causation, modern F1 history has tended to suggest otherwise.
Brawn, in 2009, was effectively the last customer team to win the world championship. Red Bull was a Renault customer in 2010 at the start of a run when it won four consecutive title doubles, but it was already its frontline team after Renault sold its works operation at the end of 2009, and that relationship then became more formal from 2011.
Before that, Ferrari, McLaren (with Mercedes), Renault and Ferrari had shared the spoils in the 2000s. The hybrid era only seemed to reinforce the works team advantage given the emphasis on ultra-sophisticated engine maps, energy harvesting and deployment, and how all of that interacted with the car itself to determine key performance traits.
Works team status conferred a greater edge across custom chassis/engine integration and special engine modes. That is why F1 has worked hard to cut the disparity between works and non-works teams over the years.
There are measures in the current regulations to ensure parity when it comes to the power unit specification. This was originally brought in by a technical directive in 2018, before being incorporated into the regulations, which require each power unit manufacturer to supply what’s called a homologation dossier to all its teams.
It states that all power units must be identical - save for permitted variations in fuel and oil specification, wirings and what are called minor parts requiring incidental modification.
They must also run with identical software for power unit control and be capable of being operated in precisely the same way. This means you have the same engine modes available, unlike in the early days of the current engine rules when the supplier could limit what customers ran, and means that there’s no difference in the specification of engines.
The upshot of that is if you are a customer team, you get the exact same power unit package, the exact same engine modes, the exact same performance potential as the works team. The days when it might be 50 horsepower or more down and effectively a second-class citizen are long gone.
Even Mercedes’ team is fine with this. As co-owner Toto Wolff said: “It was our mentality in the new era that not only the regulations say you need to be on equal material, but it's also how we take it. I'd rather be beaten by a customer team and know where the benchmark lies.”
While the very best parts will always go to the works team, these will simply be those of the same design that come out best within the manufacturing tolerances.
“More and more over the years, the FIA put in place monitoring and policing and regulations whereby the usage of the power unit needs to be the same across all the teams that use the same power unit,” said Stella.
“So, I have absolutely full confidence that the power unit delivery at McLaren is the same as Mercedes GP.
“Obviously, if you have a 1kW more power unit, you won’t allocate it to McLaren. But if you lose the race by one kilowatt, it is a few milliseconds.
“We get this out of our head, and we are pretty comfortable.”
Still, for McLaren to topple the Mercedes works team would have seemed unthinkable at many points over the last 10 years. For a few years from the early 2010s, McLaren was lost in a sea of internal politics and misplaced arrogance.
So, The Race asked Brown in Abu Dhabi, how much of this success is down to McLaren finally getting its house in order and how much is it F1’s rules changing to ensure parity?
“Both,” he said.
“I mean, clearly us getting our house in order [was essential]. The biggest change, which has then brought total parity, is your engine mapping has to be the same.
“That was the differentiator between a works team and a customer team, all these different power modes that we have didn’t have to be the same. As soon as that rule came in, totally confident that you can take the engine out of Lewis [Hamilton]’s car and put it in Lando [Norris]’s car and vice versa, and it’s the same power unit.
“Where the works team [still] gets an advantage is they just have a little bit more awareness of the packaging of the engine. When they get into designing their racing car, they’ll get a little bit of a head start on packaging and design in their car.
“But I think we’ve proven this year that if you do a great job, you can overcome that.”
That is partly because of a relationship with Mercedes High Performance Powertrains that McLaren calls “fantastic”.
While it’s true to say that McLaren’s Mercedes engine deal is very much a customer one - unlike when it was the works Mercedes team from 1995 to 2009 - it’s a little more comprehensive than the usual supply contract. It is viewed as more of a de facto semi-works team now.
McLaren only takes the power unit and ancillaries, so has full control over its own gearbox design. That’s essential because the gearbox casing is integral to rear suspension geometry - which is why F1 teams usually call it the suspension carrier. That means it’s free to diverge from Mercedes in a key performance area and gain an advantage.
What McLaren does have is a direct input into the development of the Mercedes power unit packaging, rather than simply being get whatever it's given.
Clear agreements on the communication of key details and lead time give McLaren better notice of what HPP is planning than before, which helps with its own designs and development schedules. And McLaren also feels it has earned a seat at the table in terms of what HPP should do on the engine side, because it has been beating the works team, which means its suggestions now carry more weight.
“We respect that Mercedes GP will always have the final word,” says Stella.
“But we are also comfortable that we can make proposals to HPP, HPP will evaluate this proposal with MGP, and then they will make the final conversation.
“But because we are dealing with people that are very, very qualified from a technical point of view, they will all be able to recognise that a certain idea on a power unit can actually be good for everyone.
“So, in relation to McLaren, at no point could we say that not having a works power unit is a limitation to become world champion.”
The 2024 season now stands as very obvious proof of that.
