McLaren splitting with Honda forced the team to address flaws they were blaming on the Japanese manufacturer, Ross Brawn claims.
There’s no doubt the Woking-based team was held back by the underperformance and lack of reliability from Honda’s engine during their three-year partnership between 2015-17.
But after CEO Zak Brown opted to switch to Renault power in 2018, McLaren’s results actually failed to improve as chassis issues saw them end that year fighting Williams at the back of the grid.
And Brawn believes that’s because problems were only addressed when the Honda excuse had gone.
“They’ve got some sensible people there now, and it took them a while to recognise that,” he told Motorsport.
“People say they made a big mistake getting rid of Honda but, I think funnily enough they almost needed to do that to recognise what they needed to do with the team.
“They were blaming Honda all the time and I think they would recognise now that wasn’t true, that wasn’t everything, and in getting rid of Honda and getting a benchmark, they recognised they had to do something with the team.”
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By addressing those issues and bringing in new personnel like F1 team boss Andreas Seidl and technical director James Key, McLaren jumped from near the back in 2018 to a dominant fourth in the Constructors’ Championship last year.
And Brawn thinks that wouldn’t have happened without the Honda split.
“I don’t know how they would have come to that conclusion unless they put an engine in the back of the car that somebody else was racing and somebody else was doing well with,” he stated.
“In doing that they recognised then that they have some bigger problems other than just the engine and they had to make some changes and I think they have made some very sensible changes.”
Now, McLaren is setting their ambitions even higher thanks to the 2021 regulation changes, with a target set of competing for podiums and wins by 2023.
The reason for the slightly longer timeframe is to give the new $175m budget cap a chance to make a real impact, and the F1 motorsport boss admits midfield teams would have liked the limit to have been even less.
“They’re very challenged economically. That’s part of the problem,” he said.
“I know there’s a little bit of frustration from some of the teams that the cost controls aren’t lower because I think we had to put them at a level that was manageable for the top teams.
“But it will still be a dramatic change for the top teams in terms of the change of their structure and so on.
“I think that very process will bring some more parity between the midfield and the top teams in F1. So I think there’s a brighter future for the same midfield teams,” he added.
“The new commercial deal is much more equitable. The prize money is much more fairly distributed among the teams.
“So those teams, some of them are going to have a substantial increase in their prize money, making their economics more sensible.”