Boullier reflects on his beginnings at McLaren F1 and on Magnussen

In an interview with the official Formula 1 website, Eric Boullier, McLaren’s racing director, discussed Kevin Magnussen’s start to the season as well as his own first months leading the team in Woking.

Kevin Magnussen won the title in Formula Renault 3.5 last year and was promoted to full-time driver at McLaren; Eric Boullier explains the difficulties faced by this rookie who is used to winning: « Kevin is experiencing the beginner’s syndrome. They struggle to understand that the car they are trying to develop gives them a result that doesn’t satisfy them, if you don’t have the best car, you can’t win. That’s where they struggle the most. Other than that, it’s going very well, he has found his bearings, his feedback is good, and he manages to rally the whole team around him to make the car faster. He’s doing very well for a rookie ».

During the Spanish Grand Prix weekend, Jenson Button stated that McLaren needed two experienced drivers, while Boullier denies this: “I don’t think it’s more difficult to have a rookie instead of two experienced drivers. A young driver like Kevin does a significant part of the work and provides the necessary feedback to address some of the team’s questions. When you have someone experienced like Jenson, you get better feedback and can dig deeper to find solutions,” he concludes.

Regarding his “fabulous personal ascent” in motorsport and especially Formula 1, the competition director remains very evasive. Fabulous ascent: that’s an expression I’ll leave to you, motorsport is my life. I don’t necessarily realize what I’m doing and where I am. I take opportunities as they come and try to do my best. I don’t see this arrival at McLaren as an ascent, and it wasn’t at all in a career plan because I never thought I would work in Formula 1. This opportunity and the way it happened, I refuse to speak about it very sincerely. The rational and the irrational are intertwined in this decision. There are also a whole lot of reasons that don’t need to be public.

For Eric Boullier, the magnitude of the task is significant; getting the Woking team back on track will be difficult, but not impossible. The first objective is to find a competitive team again. The task is more significant than I thought. I hadn’t underestimated it; it’s just that I didn’t expect certain things. Ron Dennis may have sought an Eric Boullier method. He’s a competitor. He quickly understood that McLaren had grown, multiplied its activities, and become more of an engineering company than a racing team. It has lost competitiveness. Upon my arrival, he told me: you only take care of F1. Then he told me that it involved a reset of the company culture to bring back a racing spirit. People need to behave like competitors and not managers. It’s a big transition. The changes I am instigating are not necessarily radical, but some have already understood what’s going to happen. I don’t have the soul of a killer, but it’s true that I can put people in difficult situations if they don’t meet my expectations. My goal is to know what McLaren is capable of and where we’re going.

One week before the Canadian GP, the sporting director believes in his drivers’ chances; the track, being mainly composed of straights and chicanes, suits the car better. After a Grand Prix with both cars scoring points on the legendary circuit of the Principality, the team in gray wants to continue their momentum.