Atlas F1

Canadian GP Spectator Report

by Bob Pearson, Canada

Despite the huge disappointment of the Luxembourg Grand Prix this past weekend, it is hard to disagree that McLaren is back. It is a winning team, with winning drivers. Let us not forget to look past the bitter disappointment of engine failures Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard must both have felt at the 'Ring. When we do look past it, we see a team that otherwise dominated the weekend: McLaren cars were the fastest cars on the track from the get-go on Friday morning through Sunday. Race winner Jacques Villeneuve suggested he would have settled for third place had the McLaren cars not dropped out; they could not be caught. And while the team has two wins to its credit already this season, there are some that were lost when engines failed. Hakkinen himself has retired from the lead three times in 1997 with a dead Mercedes-Benz engine behind him. On top of that was Coulthard's rotten luck with the pit-stop in Montreal. With a little more luck, we may have seen a McLaren team on top of the field -- each driver with three wins a piece.

Looking back just a few years to 1994, we saw a McLaren team that was winless for first time since 1980. In 1997, after three successive winless seasons, David Coulthard snapped the streak by winning the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. Was this a fluke win? In a race which saw the favoured Williams cars fail to finish? Maybe it was; maybe it was not.

With Ron Dennis at the helm, McLaren has been a superb success. Starting with the TAG-Porsche Engine -- driven to 26 wins by Prost (19), Lauda (6) and Watson (1) -- followed by Honda Power (turbo and normally aspirated) -- driven to 48 wins by Senna (34), Prost (11) and Berger (3) -- the team dominated the turbo era and the subsequent return to normally aspirated power in 1989.

In 1993, powered by Ford, the team was treated to five wins by the great Ayrton Senna; five wins that one might like to think had much more to do with Senna than the car. Without Senna, it is plausible to suggest, the team may not have won in 1993 either. 1993 was also an odd year with Michael Andretti learning his way around F1 by trial and (mostly) error, then quitting, and Mika Hakkinen taking over as number two only to out-qualify Senna the first chance he got.

Since Senna left the team for Williams in 1994, and with the endless tinkering with rules to slow cars down since his death at Imola, McLaren has been a team very much on the short end of luck. Sure, there were some good moments for the team: Martin Brundle's second place at Monte Carlo, Mika Hakkinen’s fourth place in the 1994 Championship, Coulthard impressed with his start at Imola in 1996 when he led the race for many laps, and Hakkinen again proving he is a strong points scorer with 31 points and fifth place in the 1996 Championship. The team has had some downers too: They changed engines three times (and is only now having serious reliability), Nigel Mansell (need more be said?), and three years without a win.

Coulthard's win at Melbourne was no fluke as the team had been getting faster and more competitive since the 1996 season started. McLaren's record for 1997 speaks of a team that is ready to become the leader again, perhaps as soon as 1998. And, yes, with Coulthard and Hakkinen. Both of them have proven their abilities to lead the field.

Since Melbourne, where both drivers were on the podium--when can we recall the last time that success happened for McLaren?--McLaren drivers have been in the points eight times (nine if we think for a moment that Hakkinen was third at Belgium before being disqualified) and Coulthard won the Italian Grand Prix with all of the top runners still going. Surely, by now, the team is no fluke. A look at the timing sheets shows that McLaren drivers have topped the charts in a session eight times in practice, warm-up or qualifying with Mika Hakkinen winning the team's and his first pole position of the season at the 'Ring. In fact, Hakkinen is responsible for all the session-leading times for McLaren in 1997.

While neither McLaren driver managed to finish the race this weekend, it was still a promising outing for a team that has a glorious history; a glorious history that will soon be furthered.

The future is certainly looking good for McLaren. The best it has looked since it was announced that Senna was leaving the team. We can now sit back, as fans, and enjoy this team's return to the winner's circle.


Bob Pearson
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