McLaren's drive for off-track excellence

Although earlier competitive events had been staged - more specifically between car and bicycle - it is generally accepted that the world's first motor race was held between Paris and Rouen on July 23, 1894, having been organised by a long-gone French publication and known as Competition for Horseless Carriages that were not dangerous, easy to drive, and cheap during the journey.

The event was a cross between trial and race, with over 100 competitors entering.

The winner - after a 'bent' de Dion was excluded! - was Peugeot, a brand very much in evidence on today's roads. Peugeot's victory set a precedent: motorsport could develop the breed, and marketing kudos could be derived therefrom.

Ford perfected that strategy with its 'Race on Sunday, sell on Monday' philosophy, with manufacturers joining F1 by the half-dozen in the early noughties - which had BMW, Fiat, Honda, Jaguar, Mercedes, Renault and Toyota brands emblazoned on cars entered by, in most cases, wholly owned teams.

It could not last, for logic dictated that in a full field one works entry would finish, at best, 14th - beaten possibly by 'low-rent' privateers - and gradually they withdrew, mainly due to shareholder pressure, but not least through increasingly stringent regulations that eliminated adventurous engineering that could trickle into mainstream production.

Toyota regularly pointed out that F1's KERS systems were technically inferior to units fitted to the Prius, while a BMW engineer lamented before the German car company withdrew that its 3-series range was more technical advanced than the F1.09 due to driver aids and gizmos being banned, engines/transmissions frozen and components standardised.

It had reached the stage, he said then, where F1 fans arrived at circuits in cars considerably more sophisticated than the grid they paid £400 to see...

Although 2014's 'eco-friendly' regulations are designed to redress the (im)balance, the fact is these 1600cc V6 compound turbo specifications have been substantially diluted since the concept was introduced, with centre-of-gravity, overall weight and V-angle all prescribed, while there is talk of standardising performance-differentiating componentry.

Toyota left F1 in 2009 © LAT

No kudos in that. Obviously car companies agree, for since the regulations were mooted in 2008 not a single manufacturer has signed up, while no fewer than four departed.

However, the fact that opportunities for bilateral technology (and other) transfer between F1 and mainstream automotive production are diminishing has not left F1 in a commercial lurch, as the recent Motorsport Business Forum held in the run-up to the US Grand Prix in Austin attested.

If anything, the fact that one avenue is narrowing has forced F1's players to seek lucrative opportunities in other fields, with McLaren's Dr Geoff McGrath, managing director of McLaren Applied Technologies, delivering an impressive presentation. This column subsequently caught up with McGrath for an exclusive interview.

MAT was established in 2004 with a view to exploiting the entrepreneurial spin-offs generated by McLaren's various activities. It came of age over the last three years after McGrath, a mechanical engineer with global experience in the oil/gas and internet/media industries, joined the company with a brief to turn the operation into a self-financing start-up as the third main pillar in the McLaren Group alongside Racing and Automotive.

Since 2009 MAT has increased from three heads to over 40 personnel, indicating the enormous growth and potential of the company, which has doubled its turnover (and margins) year-on-year. McGrath won't disclose revenues, save to say that it is in the low millions, adding that turnover per head is "up here with benchmark competitors such as PA Consulting".

He reports through McLaren F1 team principal and CEO of Racing, enabling MAT to draw from Racing's DNA and provides an opportunity for staff rotation. Although MAT could in theory exist without Racing, McGrath believes its unique blend of (winning) culture and technology gives the company its advantage over competitors. "I think culture trumps strategy," he says.

Is it coincidental that MAT was founded at a time when F1 - and McLaren, which in the '80s was transformed from a team operated by disciples of the late racer/founder Bruce McLaren to one now controlled by McLaren Group chairman Ron Dennis through the direct intervention of then-sponsor Marlboro - was weaning itself off tobacco sponsorship as it sought commercial pastures new? Some teams adapted; others died/shrank...

"It's a mature question," he acknowledges. "I think the world of sponsorship, like advertising, isn't it changing? I think the idea of selling eyeballs, it's not enough anymore, is it? The way I look at it, it's value-add to the partner relationship...

Geoff McGrath

"It works both ways," he adds, using the McLaren GSK Centre for Applied Performance (GlaxoSmithKline, the world's fourth-largest multinational pharmaceutical, biologics, vaccines and consumer healthcare company - think Lucozade among other products) as an example.

"In Woking, in the factory, it will basically be a place to display the technological innovation of the two companies. To inspire a generation to go into science and engineering. That's the kind of thing partners now expect."

MAT exists, he says, to "deliver breakthroughs in performance through the application of advanced technology and design," adding "[race teams] can come up with a technical solution and they have seen that they're extremely good at defining a problem in a way that sometimes the customers can't see.

"What we've done is married very good design expertise to that, and that's where the human touch comes in. So the outpour is something that's appealing, that people want to use. But under the hood, so to speak, is a phenomenal engine of intelligence, but I don't need to sell that.

"I'm selling results, or performance. And that's why I often say we're a technology company that sells performance. That's what people will pay a premium for."

Yes, but what exactly does MAT offer?

"What Formula 1 gives you is decades and hundreds of millions of pounds' worth of technology that's not been commercialised before," explains McGrath. "That is one thing - all those ideas and technologies that got shelved because of regulation changes or whatever, [they are] right there for the picking.

"That means a company that spins out of Formula 1 can take a solution to market far faster than a normal company, who have to spend a decade of research, spending their own money, to actually develop that.

"We've got the technology sitting on the shelf. The challenge is to apply it through designing it in such a way that it will be adopted fast."

Although most of F1's technology was banned through being too successful, the irony is that it was seldom patented ("in most cases the prevailing nature of Formula 1 makes it not worth trying to patent the technology") and MAT's function is to investigate activities in which such technology can be exploited.

"When we see that the technology is relevant, let's say in a medical space, we'll patent both the technology and application.

McLaren Technology Centre

"By the way, that's exactly what we've done; we have applied for and are being granted patents in technologies that are mature for racing, but they're novel for use in other industries," he explains, but won't be drawn on the number of patents held by MAT save to concede that it holds patents under pseudonyms to throw people off-scent. "Ron's [Dennis] a very different man..." he laughs.

McLaren is primarily an automotive company, so MAT obviously played crucial roles in the development of its road car range - but, as becomes clear, some of MAT's biggest successes have been in unrelated fields.

However, first the automotive side...

"I think our experience with a facility we've set up - our High Performance Centre - it's a simulation environment where we bring teams to validate their designs. I can't name the customers that have been through there, but it's an absolute Who's Who of the automotive world. So I think we know how to complement even the best companies in the market."

Talk soon switches to simulation work - McLaren's F1 facility is rated as the gold standard - and the expressive McGrath becomes totally animated as he warms to the topic. Could the equipment be retailed commercially?

"I think the simulator McLaren has is such a high-precision tool that I don't think it would be used to maximum capability were it used as a toy, so to speak.

"I see the opportunity, however, of introducing a version that would allow the equivalent of a virtual showroom, and that makes me think that it could be a high-end entertainment opportunity.

"I mean, what would you pay to drive the car of your dreams on the road of your dreams? It might be a car you can't buy; it could be an experience you can't buy. I think with a suitable partner we'd be very keen to pursue that.

"Once again, it plays to our model. We're not in the entertainment business, except when we race..." says the former entertainment executive.

"Automotive is the finest example of applied technologies. I don't take credit for that - Ron Dennis should - but that is the best manifestation of applied technologies, if you like. The result is the product; the car. Now, what's next?"

Ron Dennis © LAT

Indeed. It becomes clear that some of MAT's biggest successes lie outside the automotive sector, and while the company is bound by secrecy agreements, he shines a light where possible. Telemetry is the topic: using data to drive strategy and decision-making in real-time.

"We've found it resonates very well, both at systems and consulting levels," he says. "We're working with GSK, with oil and gas companies, big logistics challenges, we did air traffic control, we've done fast-moving consumer goods, areas where you want to process large amounts of data to guide agile management decisions.

"This technology is highly applicable, and we're not competing with shelf systems."

MAT has also been highly active in non-motorsports and the medical world, with aspects of the two environments converging after it started training with elite athletes, measuring their performance.

"I can measure their vital signs," he says, "and measure how they use the bike or the canoe, and we took the data in real time and presented the bikers' performance dashboard to the coach. That was the first step in proving what was possible."

McGrath found no correlation between prevailing GPS systems and heart rate monitors, calling the (lack of) integration a "joke". "We developed modular electronics, simple and small. Sport wasn't the prize, to me it was subsidised research, and of course to develop prototypes.

"Then we worked with professional sports to ruggedise the product and test on people for a fee, for profit. So we worked with Chelsea Football Club and the RFU.

"We worked with the English rugby squad, which is the best we've done, because we went with them from measuring how hard a player is training [in order] to understand when they hit the limit of training that could expose them to the risk of injury in a game."

McGrath likens the concept to remote monitoring of an overheating engine - F1 style.

"The philosophy's the same; that's the inspiration we got. The ambition is, just like in a race, to measure live data and use that to guide strategy. 'Alright, how long shall we run a player out there; when to take him off? What's the best case for him, how does it affect the team?' It's not a trivial calculation.

McLaren Applied Technologies workshop

"Thus coaches can figure out how hard their players are working; how hard a player can be tackled, then say, 'Hey, that player is going to get fatigued.' Today you're not allowed to do that in a game through regulations, but you can in training. But, in the future, if you can measure position and maybe impact, you could derive an awful lot of information.

"Assets like football players are worth tens of millions of pounds; you better get him off the pitch before he tires and sprains his leg. There's a hundred million pounds of assets running around."

From there it is but a small step to executive performance monitoring, an activity MAT is actively pursuing. It is, of course, no hindrance that said executives have executive authority over sponsorship budgets...

With such agility, creativity and technology, is it any wonder McLaren remains arguably the best funded F1 team despite utterly independent? The only millionaires in its space-age, award-winning Technology Centre are self-made.