Silverstone honours Lewis
Lewis Hamilton has won the British Grand Prix at Silverstone a record seven times, and now the circuit is honouring their home hero by renaming the pit straight in his honour. Ahead of the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, David Coulthard, president of the British Racing Drivers' Club (BRDC), owners of Silverstone, announced that the International Pit Straight would now be known as the Hamilton Straight. "It is the first time in Silverstone's history that a part of the circuit has been named after any individual," he said. “Lewis has become a huge part of this history and the directors of the Club and I felt there was no better way to mark this than to rename the iconic pits straight in recognition of his record-breaking achievements."
The 2020 season saw Hamilton set new standards in F1, with the 35-year-old matching and then surpassing Michael Schumacher’s 91 wins to set a new benchmark for the most victories in F1 history. He subsequently tied the German’s record tally of seven world championship titles. The spot on the Silverstone track named after Hamilton has become synonymous with his victory celebrations in recent years, as home fans spill onto the track to surround the podium. Hamilton has actively engaged with them, going as far as ‘crowd surfing’ in celebration.
McLaren’s sales a substantial part of team
McLaren’s sale of a substantial part of its Formula 1 team comes just hours before the final race of the 2020 season could secure its best result in almost a decade. The sale alone makes December 13, 2020, a significant date in McLaren’s modern history, with McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown calling it a “key moment” in its progress, “the start of the next chapter” and something that will “turbocharge” the team’s efforts. Clinching third in the constructors’ championship may just make it the most important day in an awfully long time. In the last few years McLaren’s prospects in F1 and as a wider company have endured a rollercoaster ride.
Veteran team boss Ron Dennis was ousted in 2017, and a combination of poor results plus the split from Honda after a miserable 2015-17 partnership had a significant financial impact. McLaren’s F1 team is relatively healthy, with good future prospects under the leadership combination of Brown and team principal Andreas Seidl, who have played a key role in its recent turnaround. But it is vulnerable as part of a wider McLaren Group that has been in serious financial difficulty. Chairman Paul Walsh, brought in earlier this year, said it had a fundamentally “fragile” business model that has required serious work to rectify. The company made redundancies, including among the Racing division, after a major early-year cash influx from majority Group owner, Bahrain’s Mumtalakat group, but also had to get a $150m loan from Bahrain’s national bank as well. cLaren is also in the process of selling its Woking headquarters and leasing it back long-term to raise funds.
In the context of the wider struggles, the fate of the F1 team was questioned. Not long after Williams’s F1 team was put up for sale earlier this year, McLaren considered the possibility of selling a minority stake among its various options. That has now materialised in the form of a consortium of US investors, via an initial connection through Mumtalakat, agreeing a 15% stake rising to a maximum 33% keeping McLaren Group as the majority owner but giving up a substantial part of the business in return for £185m in investment. It’s extremely important because it reduces further pressure on the Group at a time of great financial sensitivity while also reinforcing the inherent strength of the Racing division.
This is crucial in McLaren’s ambitions. Since its nadir across the Honda seasons McLaren has had to confront the reality that it had also slipped from the heights of its regular race-winning and title-challenging days of just a few seasons earlier. The 2018 season with Renault power forced it to accept its car development capabilities were not what they were thought to be, a major restructuring took place, and two seasons later McLaren’s on a handsome upwards trajectory again. McLaren has serious momentum and opportunity in F1 for the first time in eight years. A return to Mercedes power and introduction of a $145m budget cap in 2021, allied with major new technical rules in 2022, create a window for it to bridge the gap that has emerged to the likes of Mercedes and Red Bull. Major infrastructure projects like a new simulator and windtunnel have been undertaken to give it the resources it needs. That technology, the right personnel in place and the means to operate at the budget cap will eliminate many meaningful deficits to F1’s current benchmarks.
“McLaren was always going to continue in Formula 1,” says Brown when asked by The Race what the investment does for McLaren’s prospects. “But given our rich history of success, it was very clear that the shareholders have one goal in mind from a competition standpoint: that’s to get back to competing for the world championship. And so this investment gives us those resources, and financial independence. It’s obviously been a very difficult year for everybody in Formula 1. And I would argue probably as impactful on McLaren Racing as anyone. Just to be looking forward now, having all the tools we need, is extremely exciting and I think we have a very, very strong future ahead of us.”
So McLaren’s participation in F1 was not in the balance. But financial uncertainty would have undermined the progress. It could have caused those projects to grind to a halt entirely (the build of the windtunnel and simulator had been paused), forced key people to leave, disrupted the journey behind the scenes and left McLaren in a vicious circle not dissimilar to the one that engulfed Williams, with a lack of cash breeding poor performance, poor results, and poor financial reward. If there was confidence this would be avoided before, it is now rooted in reality. "It would have been extremely difficult” to make further progress without this investment, Brown concedes, and ambitions would have had to be lowered. So the vital financial support for the F1 team has been reinforced and targets remain high but achievable, all while maintaining continuity within the organisation too as Brown has committed his long-term future as part of the investment. “Here we can have our cake and eat it,” says Walsh. “And play to win.”
