In a message on the team’s website McLaren Operations director Simon Roberts has said the entire team scrapped their Christmas holiday plans to get ahead on the new car, Motorsport.com has revealed.
As well as this the team announced that their car will be complete and unveiled on their website on the 21st of February, the day before the beginning of the first pre-season test in Barcelona.
The team had originally planned to unveil the car 10 days later, just before the first test was originally planned for. But because the start of the season has now been brought forward this added extra pressure on the team which led to their decision to scrap their staff’s Christmas breaks so they could get the car complete for the first test.
“Our entire build program wasn’t lined up for that. So we knew we had a problem to solve.
“In terms of our design and engineering capacity, it’s a relatively straightforward re-planning exercise – there’s less time to get the work done, so everyone works a bit harder.
“But the build schedule is on a critical path – it needs to pass all the FIA safety tests and be ready for the first test, which was also brought forward. In that situation, you can’t just re-plan, you need to do something different.”
Roberts said that the only solution to sort the matter out was making up the time through getting production staff working over the Christmas break.
“In simple terms, we put about eight shifts of work back into the program over a five-day period – a fantastic effort,” he said.
“In total, there were about 110 people involved and we looked after our Christmas workers with a competitive package.
“We had a really good response, and people seemed to enjoy it too – it was a bit weird, not having all the time off, but there was a good spirit in the place. Everyone knew why they were doing it, and it really cleared the decks.
“Most pleasingly, it meant that, once we came back in the New Year, we were back on schedule – and it felt like the program had always been phased that way. It was an incredible effort.”
After a dismal 2015 season, McLaren seemed to have pulled out all the stops and put in maximum effort to ensure similar issues that hampered them last season don’t occur again. Despite this, they have still stuck with the size zero engine package that could be accused was the main reason for their struggles.
We look forward to seeing what they have on February 21st.
