Why ambition was McLaren's biggest fault

If there was a single trait that McLaren has to single out as the culprit for its woeful 2013 Formula 1 campaign, it would have to be ambition.

Having been a genuine title contender in 2012, and ended that season with the fastest car, it had spent the subsequent winter comfortable with a decision to go radical with its new design.

It was fearful that it had reached a development ceiling with the MP4-27, and that a simple evolution for 2013 would leave it exposed to falling behind as rivals inevitably made progress with their own machinery. So it decided to be bold.

Enter a switch to pull rod front suspension, a revised rear end and some extreme bodywork around the back of the sidepods - plus a whole host of problems in extracting speed from a car that proved ultra-sensitive to ride-height set-up.

It led to McLaren's worst season in decades, as it failed to bring home a single podium finish for the first time since 1980.

But during the many hours McLaren pored over the reasons for where it went wrong, the conclusion it came to was fairly simple.

For this was not some massive windtunnel correlation issue, a single bad component derailing its pace, or a design concept having taken it down a path of uncompetitiveness. It had ultimately been an error of processes.

It had underestimated how difficult it was going to be getting on top of an all-new design philosophy. In simple terms it had been too ambitious.

The team had high hopes at its launch © LAT

McLaren was guilty of being too confident in its ability to pull together the separate design teams that brought the MP4-28 to life; and did not factor in just how long it was going to take to understand how best to exploit the speed that it knew was locked inside the car.

By the time the team had got on top of the issues and worked out exactly what it needed to do to make the car work, it was too late for it to catch up.

It was six months behind the development curve of its rivals and, in a field as competitive as F1 is right now, it was never going to make up the lost ground.

McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh says the mistakes could ultimately be traced back to the post-summer period in 2012, when the team got nervous about the rate of progress it was making with that year's car.

"Normally in relatively stable conditions 1 to 1.5 seconds is a winter gain," he told AUTOSPORT. "Those metrics are something you live by.

"What tends to happen is that every now and again you get on a roll, you get a good upturn in performance, you feel good with life, and it is all looking good. But occasionally it goes flat for a while and then you start to worry and fret and panic.

"We were looking at our development last year - we had a reasonable car, and then it did not respond in development terms.

"Every week you are delivering 1.5 to 2 points of downforce and when you go for a six-week period of not doing that, you start to worry.

"It was maybe at that time that the engineering team worried our progress was horizontal and we had to break out of there. So we said: 'OK, we are ambitious. We don't just want a good car; we want a dominant car next year.' So we threw everything at it.

"But I think we lost a holistic feel for what the car was and we ended up with a series of good ideas. It was a 2 plus 2 equalling 3.5, not 5. That is where we got to. That was one mistake."

McLaren was not just guilty of being too confident in its own abilities over the concept of the car, though, for it perhaps was too bolshie in its conviction that it could turn things around in time.

Whitmarsh admits McLaren was too stubborn © LAT

There were factions inside the team wanting it to make an early-season switch back to the 2012 car - but those calls were drowned out by engineers who were convinced they could make the MP4-28 work.

"We were too stubborn and slow to realise that maybe we are killing ourselves to confront it," confessed Whitmarsh.

"By the time we got to the point 'Houston, we have a serious problem', we were six months late - and six months late is 1 to 1.5 seconds.

"Then, to compound it, and this sounds like a pile of excuses which I hate, but by that time there was the 2014 rules issue.

"If you had had these [2013] regulations going into next year then you would have said: 'We have to make this work.' But by that point with a looming set of new regulations, a looming period of three years [for McLaren] with three different power trains, you have to make some harsh decisions.

"You always hope that there is a eureka moment, that you can fix that and it all comes good. But there was nothing fundamentally wrong."

The explanation for McLaren's woes does at least provide some encouragement going forward - for it has shown that those involved have understood where things went wrong.

Ambition being allowed such a free run can be reined in by strong management; and the lack of cohesion in the design teams has been helped by internal restructuring that has included the recruitment of Matt Morris as engineering director to help pull things together. Insiders say his impact is already being positively felt.

Perhaps best of all for McLaren is that it has had a huge wake-up call about the way it does things. It paid a hefty price for its errors, but that has at least forced it to expose the weaknesses in its organisation.

Whitmarsh added: "Failure is a painful thing. But a kick up the pants - sometimes you need it personally and the organisation needs it.

"I am an optimistic type of fellow. I come out of it and say, 'I didn't like that much.' But going forward now, looking to the future, it has made us make some decisions that would have been difficult for the organisation to make last winter.

The team is adamant it has learned valuable lessons © LAT

"If you imagine, during the winter [of 2012/2013] and until Australia, we thought we were as good as anybody.

"If you go into an organisation with 180 engineers preaching, 'you have to change' - even if they are willing to accept that face-to-face - they are not really willing to accept it because they think they are doing a better job than anybody else.

"So I think we changed quite a lot this year and have been able to. Frankly, who can say - although a few tried, I must say - but the majority cannot sit there and say, 'We don't need to change as we have done a good enough job.' Because we haven't.

"Change in this environment is quite a lot easier, and change is essential in any organisation whether it is on top of its game or not. It is just more difficult to implement when it perceives itself to be on top of its game."

There are no guarantees that McLaren will get it spot on in 2014 as it embarks on a final year with Mercedes power prior to its reunion with Honda.

But at least the team has now faced up to the reality that it has to change its attitude and approach if it is not to face another annus horribilis.

The all-new regulations do offer a level playing field for teams in terms of previous form being carried over - but equally it means there is no excuse for McLaren if it does not get itself back to the front.

But what it must not do is base its ambitions on dreams that cannot be delivered. It must not get ahead of itself again.