Yet, McLaren’s ‘‘problem’’ today cannot be pinpointed to one particular area. It has also lost key personnel over the years and had to rebuild staff. Chief among those people was Adrian Newey, the designer. After Williams lost Newey as its technical director responsible for designing the team's winning cars of the 1990s, it has not won a title since he left in 1997. After Newey joined McLaren the team won championships in 1998 and 1999. Last year Newey joined Red Bull, and McLaren failed to win a race.
McLaren also one of its key engine people, Paul Morgan, who in partnership with Mario Ilien, created the company that made the Mercedes engines — Ilmor - and who died in a private plane crash in 2001.
McLaren has become such a big company with so many different interests — it builds sports cars with Mercedes — that it has adopted a different management format than many of the other of the independent Formula 1 teams. The company aims not to have any single strong leader but a corporate system, which many observers believe cannot work in Formula 1.
Drawing the Pieces Together
Yet McLaren has come so close to the title recently that seems unlikely to be the problem; a decade ago experts said that a team could not succeed by building its own chassis and engine. That was the reason given for Ferrari's failure to win during the period in which Renault provided engines to the winning teams of Benetton and Williams. Now, a majority of the teams build their engines and chassis, for the seamless integration Ferrari later excelled at.
McLaren simply needs time to reunify the elements. With a driver like Alonso, and Lewis Hamilton, the team's sensational long-time protégé who starts his first season in Formula 1 as a driver in 2007, McLaren could be back on its way. The new rules which put all teams on the same tires — Bridgestone — and which limit engine development, could help McLaren return not only to winning races, but championships too.
