McLaren launch recruitment drive to help fill F1 ‘weaknesses’

While the Woking-based team openly admit it is pending the arrival of a new wind tunnel and a simulator in the middle of next year before he can accelerate his progress, he does not sit still in the meantime.

After a season where he didn’t make the progress he wanted, having drifted away from the top three teams, McLaren knows he has to get things done if he wants to move forward.

Speaking at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix season close, team principal Andreas Seidl revealed that part of his efforts to improve things include hiring more staff at the over the next 12 months.

The team felt that the way its early-season brake issues triggered problems for its in-season development program revealed a lack of resources.

“This season has clearly shown us some of the weaknesses that we still have in terms of team setup,” Seidl said.

“And thanks to the problems we were having, it became clear to us that we didn’t have enough resources available compared to other teams, especially on the engineering side, to be able to cope with the developments of the current car. more do of course, in parallel you can also take a look at next year’s car.

“That’s why we’ve worked hard, also in conjunction with the finance department, knowing that we’re also working in a cost cap environment, to find synergies and efficiencies in the way we currently do F1. .

“It’s allowed us to launch now, about two months ago, a pretty big campaign to hire more engineers to just have more people available, so we can do things more in the future. parallel.

“I think that’s definitely one of the weaknesses we have in the team right now. And hopefully by bringing in more of those engineers next year we can take another step there.

It is understood that the jobs include high-level positions, including aerodynamic project manager, principal aerodynamicists, principal suspension designers and aerodynamic designer.

With teams operating under a cost cap in F1, McLaren has given the green light to the recruitment push after a thorough analysis of its spending in the first year of the new rules highlighted where savings can be made. be achieved and resources diverted, to bring on board personnel who can help improve their performance.

Seidl also explained that the major brake issues that plagued McLaren during pre-season testing and the opening race in Bahrain had long-term consequences for the team, which could yet be felt in the future. next year.

“I think it had quite a consequence for us as a team for different reasons,” he said. “First of all, obviously, with testing being so limited these days, and going into a whole new era of Formula 1, with completely new cars, and then missing half of the testing, compared to all the other competitors, definitely put us on the back foot quite a bit in terms of preparing for the season.

“Then we also had to use a lot of resources, at a time when we would have liked to use all the resources just to develop the performance of the car, instead of solving the brake problems.

“It’s also something that I think set us back even further and to some extent probably even impacted the development of next year’s car because we didn’t could start it as early as we would have liked to do.”