Eric Boullier welcomes us exclusively at McLaren F1

When Eric Boullier arrived at McLaren at the beginning of the season, it was specified that he would not be the team principal as he was at Lotus, but the racing director. Two-thirds of the season later, he explains the differences between these two positions to us: “I do 100% the same job as at Lotus, except that I no longer have the commercial responsibility of the team. And that suits me very well because the entire commercial side, the search for partners, takes up an enormous amount of time. At McLaren, we are structured differently since all communication and marketing are grouped into a separate company, McLaren Marketing. Ron Dennis and Ekrem Sami are in charge of this part.”

Nevertheless, this does not mean that the Frenchman escapes all public representation obligations: « I still do public relations for McLaren because I have a public profile for the team, but that’s all. » The energy he saves by no longer being involved in commercial negotiations allows him to focus solely on all aspects of the team’s sport, technical, and production: « In total, this represents 700 people. 700 people who design, think, create, build, and run two racing cars. »

Eric Boullier experienced a dream start to the season, with a double podium from Australia, following Daniel Ricciardo’s disqualification. Nevertheless, performances then declined, despite having the best engine on the grid with Mercedes. This situation was unfortunately predictable for the technician: From the very first day I arrived at McLaren, I knew we wouldn’t be very good in terms of performance. The only positive thing before the first race was that McLaren was ready, in the sense that we were ready to use the new power unit at 100% of its capacity. And there were only two teams that could do that at the time, Mercedes and McLaren. All the other teams were afraid of retiring. So they ran with engines set to the minimum performance, and that’s how McLaren seized the opportunity to get on the podium. But we knew we were far from Mercedes in terms of performance and that eventually, other teams would slip in between them and us. We just thought it would take them longer to do it. If from the outside it might have been perceived as a step back, not at all. The performance gap since Australia between them and us is the same. It’s just that the others can now exploit their full potential by understanding how the different systems work.

However, if Eric Boullier is not pleased with such a situation, given that it was foreseeable, it was integrated into the conditions of his arrival: I asked not to have a seasonal objective because it was the first year with this new V6 turbo engine and my first at McLaren. My ambition is clearly to bring the team back to the forefront. There is a tremendous amount of work to be done. So what matters to me this year is not necessarily what we see on the track but to have the organization I want, at least 95% of what I want, so that we can integrate our new engine partner and especially that the chassis part of McLaren is organized the way I want it, so that we can build a new platform.

The arrival of Honda might suggest that McLaren would have to almost start from scratch to optimize the integration of an engine that is completely different into the chassis. However, McLaren sees more advantages than disadvantages because the Woking team will no longer be just a customer but a full partner: « We are fortunate to be Honda’s factory partner. This means we have a lot more exchanges than we currently have with Mercedes, but also more flexibility. The engine and accessories part will therefore be much better integrated than it is today because there have been real discussions between the two parties. »

Moreover, McLaren believes it can learn a lot from the current season to apply it to the next season: « It’s not as simple as it used to be when, in June, we would switch to developing the next car. There will certainly be such a transition, but not immediately because, as part of the reorganization we’ve discussed, I’ve requested that we continue developing the current car for as long as possible. But only on the condition that the developments we make this year can be used for next year. It certainly complicates things a bit, but it allows us to continue bringing performance this year while preparing as best as possible for the next season. »

Honda announced this week that their exclusivity with McLaren only covered the 2015 season and that they were open to supplying other teams in 2016: « It’s a good thing to have a sharing of development responsibilities and user experience. If today, we had three teams with this engine, we would have a better chance of being reliable quickly, but we can see this year with Renault that there have been many dispersions and they slightly missed the mark. So we prefer that they are 100% focused on us. And then, McLaren is one of the biggest teams in the paddock. It’s a team that is very strong in engineering. So there’s a good match and it’s not a problem to integrate with a manufacturer. »

McLaren seems to be one of the key players in the driver market for 2015 and beyond since many drivers (Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel, Lewis Hamilton…) might be prompted to change teams. The McLaren executives are therefore taking their time to reflect: « It’s a question of morale regarding the drivers. We will not wait until the end of the year to tell a driver that we are not keeping them because we have decided to take someone else. It is therefore a question of morality but also of timing. I have gone around the paddock. I know who, what, how, and when. We are therefore in the process of developing a driver strategy for the next three years. We are discussing it with our partners and future partners. But it does not depend solely on us. It also depends on the availability of certain other drivers. »

Stoffel Vandoorne, whom we met in the Barcelona paddock, is part of McLaren’s development program. He is currently having a great season in GP2 and recently stated that he feels ready for F1. His case is, of course, closely followed by Eric Boullier, who also doesn’t want to rush things: « They all say they’re ready. In any case, they think so. According to them, they’d all be ready at 12 years old! I think you need to arrive in F1 at the right time, well-prepared. Indeed, Stoffel may be ready, but to say he’s part of the team’s short-term plans, I’m not sure, and he still has a mission to finish in GP2. But we’re not closing the door if an opportunity presents itself under good conditions. We mustn’t do anything reckless. »

This season, McLaren does not have a title sponsor for the first time in years. However, this has not affected its development pace at all: « Zero, absolutely zero. Zero because McLaren’s finances are very solid. Contrary to what might be believed in the paddock, McLaren is making money. The absence of a title sponsor has not affected our budget but has affected our profitability. »

In any case, it is not planned to announce this new partner during the unveiling of the next car in order to maximize media exposure for each event: « We will not reveal this name at the same time as the new car and the new engine partner. We will do it when we think the story is best prepared. » This strategy is reminiscent of what Williams did this season, starting their winter testing with an all-blue livery before announcing the arrival of Martini.

From our special correspondent in Monza