Quote:
reginos said:... don't you think that ... the lack of spy-data this year has something to do with McLaren's sliding down the grid?
One can never ignore this possibility. It may be speculation but it's something that will always be there at the back of one's mind.
Even if there was no actual copying of the Ferrari 2007 car in the 2007 McLaren car, simply knowing the ideas that Ferrari had in 2007 is very useful for planning which route to go down during the ongoing 'during season' development process.
It's like looking over the shoulder of your class mate at school in the maths exam, seeing the answer he's written, knowing it is the right answer, then feeling a bit more confident in one's own answer. While not actually copying, it's still cheating in my view. It simply wasn't believable that only 1 or 2 people in McLaren had access to that data. As we later discovered quite a few did. (Ron Dennis did say later last season that more people did have access than he had thought at first). They may not have copied Ferrari but they must have gone through the data very carefully. Remember this is F1. Teams spy on each other all the time, in testing, in the pitlane (they even hire spies to walk up and down looking into each other's garages!)... When data is this sensitive and confidential, you can bet it spreads like wildfire. Look at how quickly the 997 MkII official data spread from Rennteam to all over the internet... people are smart, they know all too well when a good thing comes into their hands....
The FIA checked the 2008 McLaren very carefully and gave it the green light. So nothing copied from Ferrari there. And what happens? Ferrari in 2008 is 0.5 seconds ahead of McLaren. Ferrari has become a winning machine and it doesn't matter in the short and medium term whether Todt, Braun and Schumi have left. In the long term, they will need a team of the most talented people to keep that advantage going.
On a different note, back to Lewis, there was another theme I wanted to develop. It's his 'corporate speak'. As soon as the race was over (after he screwed up in Bahrain with the anti-stall mechanism on the grid, hit Alonso etc etc), he was saying stuff to Louise Goodman (ITV F1 reporter) that "I'm going to come back even stronger".
HUH??
It's this vacuous modern idea put into sportsmen's minds by sports psychologists who say always talk positively. Sure, that's all very well, but the best way in my view to avoid screwing up next time is firstly to admit that one screwed up then secondly to resolve not to screw up like that again. Then thirdly, decide how to do things differently then lastly to be positive on the basis of a different approach. You need something to be positive about. How can one be positive without changing one's plan/approach?
Lewis said the same old stuff after his disaster in Malaysia. But he made yet more mistakes at Bahrain. So what did he learn from Malaysia? Nothing. Forget talk. Talk is cheap. It's actions that count. It's like he doesn't do the "I screwed up" soul-searching stage and just says I will be positive next time. But if he goes about it in exactly the same way, he'll end up making the same mistakes. A bit foolish IMO. I put it down to his lack of experience and maturity. He doesn't realise that it's okay to say "I screwed up". It's just macho to act like one didn't or to downplay one's screw up.
Whenever I've heard his interviews since the start of 2008, it just feels like he actually believes the BS he is saying to the camera. I've just stopped believing what he says since it just lacks authenticity, sincerity and substance. Saying things you don't really mean always rings hollow and anybody with any sense of perception will see right through it. The tragedy is that he seems to believe it himself.
Maybe I'm just reading too much into what he's been saying so far this season. But I think he's lost his way and won't find it again until he gets his own head straight.
Well, let's see how he goes today. I predict no higher than 4th today.
, some of the Mclaren engineers......
