McLaren's 2024 F1 title completes its hell-and-back journey, 10 years after its true nadir

It's a neat bit of timing that McLaren, having clinched its first constructors' crown for 26 years, did so almost exactly a decade after its Formula 1 fortunes nosedived spectacularly. In the team's leap of faith, while holding hands with Honda after a long break in relations, the two brands 'did a Thelma and Louise' - and, once at the bottom, toiled for a bit before deciding that they were better off apart. The decision to split for 2018 was, in glorious retrospect, the best decision that Honda and McLaren made.

The first iteration of a McLaren-Honda partnership was not only overwhelmingly successful, but it was also iconic. Now with a little distance, particularly contextualised by the team's recent successes, McLaren's second Honda spell feels like somewhat a forgettable phase that ultimately changed the team's conservative attitude.

At the time, McLaren was firmly ensconced in a veil of bleakness; the monochromatic liveries indicate the stark literal and figurative contrasts with the current boom in papaya robes. It was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

In reality, the team's downfall had its roots in its 2012 season: a strong year in performance terms, but one plagued by quality control issues that affected reliability. Would Lewis Hamilton have left for Mercedes in 2013 had his gearbox not seized up in Singapore, with moulding foam left inside?

Either way, the decision not to develop the MP4-27 from that year and go in a completely different direction for its MP4-28 follow-up for 2013 pulled the team further down the order, and a strong start to the 2014 hybrid regulations with Mercedes power soon fizzled out.

McLaren had long since decided that it wasn't going to win as a customer team anyway. In Ron Dennis' assessment that, as long as Mercedes was not deemed to be giving the team parity it wasn't going to be challenging for top honours, it gave the team something of an out with its chassis design. Arguably, that's where it had gone wrong over the previous few seasons: that it finished 139 points behind Williams in 2014 showed that a customer powertrain deal wasn't a problem - although one must account for McLaren sticking to using Mobil fuels over Petronas for a small part of the difference...

One might argue that the 2015 season was the absolute low-point of Dennis' management of the team, and the points certainly reflect that - it had never scored so few since he took over in 1981, even in the nine-points-for-a-win era. In truth, the nadir was in that season's prologue: the now-customary end-of-season test in Abu Dhabi, back in 2014.

Post-season testing at the start of the Honda era was a struggle for McLaren - and it didn't get much better afterwards

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

McLaren used this running to bed Honda's technicians in with its race team, and also give it a chance to run Honda's new hybrid hardware in the same conditions as the other powertrain manufacturers. Piloted by reserve driver Stoffel Vandoorne, the modified 2014 car was dubbed the MP4-29H - or MP4-29H/1X1, for its full and confusing moniker.

There were lots of questions set to be answered by Honda's return to an F1 session: firstly, what did the 1X1 mean? How competitive was it going to be? And, with a still-new engine concept, how many laps was Honda going to chalk up over the two-day test?

Let's rifle through the answers now: no idea, not very, and five. Nico Rosberg did 114 laps on day one - Vandoorne got just five on the board for both days, all installation laps. Three laps were completed on the first day, all after missing the morning's allotted running: the first ended as the Belgian ground to a halt in the pitlane, and he stopped on track during the second. Vandoorne managed a 'complete' lap on the third attempt of the day.

In a hubristic attempt to run before it could walk, McLaren tasked Honda with producing a power unit that could not only work, but operate reliably at high temperatures

"The final lap was better, but we still had some issues and the team is looking into it," Vandoorne said at the time, after concluding his meagre running for the day. "They will hopefully come up with a solution for tomorrow; it's better doing this here in November than next year in Jerez. Any laps we get during these two days will be very valuable. We then have two months to solve the issues."

"We obviously planned more than three laps today, but we had some issues overnight and got delayed this morning," he added. "Tomorrow if we get anything more than [three laps] it will be good!" 

Chance would be a fine thing, Stoff.

Electrical issues precluded McLaren from running earlier in the day, and Vandoorne's stops on track were primarily linked to an issue with data exchanging linked to the fuel systems on the car. The Fleming only got two added laps on board the day after, with another morning wasted with start-up issues before the team finally banked another hitch-less installation lap.

McLaren aimed to do a four-lap run later that day but, on the first, Vandoorne came to another halt. That was it for the test, and McLaren couldn't get the car running again in time for another tour.

Boullier (centre) was forced to put a brave face on a difficult situation

Photo by: Andre Vor / Sutton Images

"Overnight it went very well - a couple of issues, but things we could unplug and run without," team principal Eric Boullier had said of the second day's delays. "We fired up at six o'clock and everything was fine; the car was on the ground ready to run at eight-thirty, driver in. We fired up the car to go at nine and then something went wrong, which obliged us to take off all the battery pack again."

Boullier echoed his reserve driver's thoughts, stating that "I'd rather be ironing out these problems in Abu Dhabi than discovering them in Jerez next February," but the initial prognosis was dire. In terms of team dynamics, there's some sound management theory in team building with a common problem, but only when the problem is outwith one of the organisations involved.

To McLaren, it probably felt like Honda had come in and given it a massive problem for 2015. Honda had its own reasons to have grievances with McLaren - namely, the insistence on a "size zero" concept for aerodynamic reasons.

In a hubristic attempt to run before it could walk, McLaren tasked Honda with producing a power unit that could not only work, but operate reliably at high temperatures. This would allow McLaren's aerodynamicists to develop a slimmer engine cover that would enhance the "Coke bottle" effect at the rear of the car.

This slimline bodywork wasn't visible on the MP4-29H/1X1, and instead the team ran it with excess cooling louvres - even adding some to the left-hand sidepod - to cover off the early threat of overheating. Not that it ran long enough for those modifications to matter.

But Boullier and Vandoorne were, in theory, right - McLaren and Honda had a full winter to work on the issues raised in Abu Dhabi and make sure that the incoming MP4-30 package was ship-shape for Jerez. There, at the southern Spanish circuit, it hoped that it could get the miles in to make up for the paucity of data from Yas Marina.

As testing opened on 1 February at Jerez, returning McLaren driver Fernando Alonso managed just six laps on the opening day. Jenson Button, re-signed at Kevin Magnussen's expense, matched that on day two. 

"You look at where the Red Bull was in the first couple of tests last year and even the last one in Bahrain, they finished second in the first grand prix," Button said after his first six laps - pointing to the Milton Keynes squad's dismal pre-season in 2014 as Renault's first-generation hybrid power unit was not reliable in the early stages of the year.

"We always knew the first test was going to be difficult, it always is. It's not as straightforward as it used to be with sticking an engine straight into the car and trying to pound round. It's a very complex system now. We've had a few things that we've been able to solve now. And tomorrow we'll see where we stand."

A tally of 32 laps was regarded as a good day at Barcelona ahead of the 2015 season

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Alonso took the car back for the third day, and managed a comparatively titanic 32 laps before a water leak brought the stint to a close. Button then managed 35 tours on the final day before a fuel pump issue, but the team had at least collected a respectable level of data from its first "proper" test - a significant upgrade on the 2014 Abu Dhabi cameo.

Then the hoodoo resumed. The cause of Alonso's infamous testing crash at Barcelona, which appeared to be relatively minor until the Spaniard was airlifted to hospital with a concussion, is still unknown. Speaking a month later, after missing the Melbourne season opener, Alonso attempted to put some of the wilder rumours to bed, but also gave an explanation of what he thought had happened in the incident.

"I didn't wake up in 1995, I didn't wake up speaking Italian, I didn't wake up all these things probably out there. I remember the accident and I remember everything the following day," Alonso said at that year's Malaysian Grand Prix.

Vandoorne's five laps at Yas Marina set the ball in motion - not in the way that he'd have hoped...

"It's not in the data anything clear that we can spot and say it was that, the reason. But definitely we had a steering problem in the middle of Turn 3, it locked to the right, I approached the wall, I braked at last moment, I downshifted from fifth to third. But, unfortunately from the data we are still missing some parts."

Magnussen took Alonso's place for Melbourne but never made the start of the race, as the engine failed on the lap to the grid. He was set to line up in 18th anyway; Button was almost three seconds off the fastest Q1 time, with Magnussen a further 0.6s behind. It was a minor miracle that Button finished the race, albeit two laps down.

Button grabbed the first points of the year in Monaco with eighth place, as the MP4-30's handling qualities took centre stage over Honda's misgivings on the roads of Monte Carlo. But the season was terrible, yielding just 27 points and ninth in the constructors' championship.

The Woking team's progress since, ignited by the stewardship of CEO Zak Brown, has been nothing short of gargantuan. In that 2014 Abu Dhabi test, McLaren took its trip to hell - and spent three or four years slowly roasting in the fire of a bad relationship with Honda, the subsequent underinvestment in its facilities, and having to find its way back. It seemed at the time that McLaren finding its way back to a title was unlikely - especially as the toil continued in the Honda years, with no apparent let-up. 

And Vandoorne's five laps at Yas Marina set the ball in motion - not in the way that he'd have hoped, but in exposing the problem of McLaren's rigid leadership, Honda's naivety in its initial powertrain development, and the subsequent split and revival in fortunes. Both have now won titles since, but it took a lot of getting things wrong to get there...

Every journey starts somewhere, and McLaren's was with Vandoorne's five installation laps at the end of 2014

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images