Drivers: Fernando Alonso – 10th, 54 points; Jenson Button, 15th, 21 points; Stoffel Vandoorne, 20th, 1 point
Best grid position: 3rd – Button, Austria
Best race result: 5th – Alonso, Monaco, United States
2016 World Constructors Championship Position (2015, 2014): 6th (9th, 5th)
For a team with the magnitude of successes such as McLaren, to not even look anywhere close to fighting for a race win let alone a World Championship since the start of the 2013 season will be painful for many to watch. A number of changes among the driver line-up, and behind the scenes has not done much to bring McLaren from mid-pack mediocrity back to where they belong. And the switch from Mercedes to an unprepared, unreliable and just plain slow Honda power unit for 2015 resulted in McLaren suffering their worst season ever. Surely the 2016 season could only be better.
McLaren F1 2016 Review
McLaren started this season with the same pair of drivers it finished the previous season with for the first time since Lewis Hamilton was at the team (excluding Kevin Magnussen’s attempt at being a stand-in last year) with Button and Alonso. Alonso would start his season off with a bang, much like 2015, and Button would end up point-less at the first race of the season.
Alonso would be deemed unfit to race at the next round at Bahrain and would be replaced by reigning GP2 champion Vandoorne, who made his F1 debut much more overdue than it should have been as it is. Vandoorne would beat Button in qualifying and would recover from a cautious start to give McLaren their first point of the season.
The Spaniard would return for China and would lead a McLaren 12-13, before the first signs of progress would emerge at Sochi. Both McLarens would finish in the points there, albeit in a race with a lot of carnage at the start.
The European races would generally produce some solid results for McLaren. Button came away with a pair of ninths at Spain and Monaco before Alonso would produce a performance familiar with fans of the Alonso of old at Monaco, with a brilliant fifth. Points would just elude McLaren at Canada and Azerbaijan – both circuits with lots of long straights.
It would be Button’s turn to shine at the next race in Austria – starting a stunning third in a wet qualifying session and making use of retirements around him to come home a strong sixth. Silverstone was a race to forget, despite the poor weather, whilst Alonso produced a fine seventh in Hungary to be best of the rest.
Germany would provide a solid result for Button with eighth, whilst Alonso finished seventh at Spa despite it being a power circuit. Button was eliminated on the first lap in that race. Typically, McLaren struggled massively at Monza – struggling to contend with the likes of Manor, before returning to the slot of ‘best of the rest’ at Singapore, and just slotting in behind the Mercedes-powered Force India and Williams in Malaysia’s heat.
Setup troubles would plague the team at Honda’s home track at Suzuka, whilst the complete opposite occurred at Texas – where Alonso barged his way through into fifth place. At the end of the season, it was clear that McLaren had progressed to somewhere fourth and sixth fastest, depending on the circuit.
2017 is where McLaren need to start delivering the goods. They will have Alonso lining up against a very hot rookie – ten years on since the infamous rivalry between the Spaniard and Hamilton, and the regulation changes putting more emphasis on chassis in theory favouring them over other teams. There will be a massive shift in the way McLaren will operate, as the great Ron Dennis has been effectively reduced to “gardening leave”, with Zak Brown (and possibly a few others) coming in to fill in the role at the top of the great team.
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