Compose Press Release

[F1] McLaren Racing - A few updates prior to the last race

29.07.2014 - Prior to the last race we think it’s time to give a quick recap of the events of the last weeks.

Season recap
Although there is still one race to go i think we can take a quick look at the last season. When we started we were quite positive to reach top 10 results on a regular basis and if everything went perfect challenge for 5th place in team standings. So where do we stand?
We think it’s safe to say that we are really pleased with the last season. We reached those top 10 results with both drivers regularly. In 18 races so far Szabo reached the top 10 10 times, while Freiverts did it 7 times. Especially Freiverts was a bit unlucky with crashes, so there is still potential for the next season. Season highlight was without a doubt Ivaan Szabos third place in Spain Grand Prix.
If there is something we have to worry about it is that our performance dropped quite a bit in the second half of the season, major problem was that other teams, especially Mercedes and Windsor, improved their cars and we were already at the car’s limit. That’s one of the reasons why we dropped from 5th place in mid-term to 7th place right now.
Prior to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix McLaren can still reach the 6th place in team standings, but Windsor is 10 points ahead and they looked fast in the last races. Individually Szabo could still reach Tök who is 6 points in front at 9th position while Freiverts could still reach 11th position with Di Rado only 4 points in front of him.
Adding to these good results we are also glad to win the inofficial german speaking (German / Austrian / Swiss) championship against our competitors LKR and Trabant. You guys had a hard season and we like to see that you are improving over the last weeks, good luck next year!

Driver announcement for Season 10
The ink on the contracts is dry for a few weeks now, so it is not really a surprise anymore. Both Szabo and Freiverts are going to drive for McLaren in the upcoming season. We are really glad to keep both of them as they are excellent drivers with a lot of talent, they work well together and are ready to share their setups and experiences and the communication inside the team is excellent too.
Thank you for your service so far, in Season 10 we hope to build you the car that your drivers deserve.

McLaren develops own engine
In Season 10 we try something different, we are going to drive with our newly developed engine (we don’t have a official name yet, codename is “Usain Bolt”, so it should be quite fast). The reason for this is that we can save quite some money over the next season as the supplier engines are quite expensive over the long term. We don’t have any result regarding development so far but we hope to get at least in the Cosworth regions and look to improve from there.

Buteo joins owner circle
At the end of the season we approached Buteo (manager of Swiss rookie driver Marco Guisan) to become a co-owner of the team as we know that he is quite active in the forums and he gladly joins our owner team. Welcome from all of us!

Congratulations to OMR and Acarini
Big congratulations to our Italian friends from OMR, you had the best car from the beginning and you really did beat the odds with your budget. Great work there. Congratulations to Andre Acarini too, really dominant season, beating St. Germain and Grandi, well done.

Thank you to our supporters
61 fans from all over the world, wow! We have quite a big group of supporters from the UK, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland and (this one comes as a surprise for us) Brazil. Thank you for your support, we really appreciate this.
For everyone who is not a supporter yet, you can still join our fan club: http://www.myracingcareer.com/en/formula1/team-12/