CoopsII wrote:dinizintheoven wrote:I was thinking more along the lines of how Brabham deliberately dropped out for a year and returned to anything but an upturn in fortunes.
I'd forgotten about that, was that for the 88 season after Bernie sold it?
I don't really expect McHonda to have a year off but this doesn't really do much to advertise their brands in a positive manner, does it? Extracting themselves from Honda would seem like a short-term solution but it couldn't be done quickly nor could another engine manufacturer simply bolt their product onto the car.
I can see us looking back at this incarnation of McLaren Honda as being the beginning of the end for the once great team. Which is ironic however way you look at it.
EDIT - I forgot this was the third year of this partnership, I thought it was the second.

I wouldn't necessarily agree that the rot set in then - their results began to decline in 2013, but it could be argued that the roots of their decline go back to 2009 and the decision by Mercedes to start divesting themselves from McLaren and to acquire their own team instead.
I suppose that the turning point would probably have been 2012 - that was the last year where Mercedes was providing them full works support (McLaren were downgraded to customer status after that), and it coincided with the loss of Hamilton and a sizeable chunk of their most senior technical directors to Mercedes.
They were already hurting financially in 2013 - they made a loss that year, IIRC, and they noted in their account that it was in part because Mercedes was no longer funding the team. That was then compounded by a relatively poor car - although not terrible, 5th place in the WCC in 2013 was one of their weakest performances in 30 years (it matched their lowest ranking in 2004 and in 1983). Similarly, even with the Mercedes engine in the back of the car, the team still couldn't better that performance in 2014 - it might admittedly have been because of a reduction in support from Mercedes because they were going to Honda, but even so you would have expected their superior resources to have told against the likes of Williams.
It was that loss of revenue and the reduction in technical support which drove the team to look towards Honda - they had a contract with Mercedes for 2015, but it was Ron who pushed for the team to switch to Honda prematurely, probably in part because the team was suffering financially and because he was already coming under pressure to start delivering on the promises he'd made when he pushed Whitmarsh out.
The deal with Honda has perhaps accelerated their decline, but I think that it is more of a symptom rather than a cause of their issues. It feels a bit like the gamble Brabham made with the BT55 - a team that saw that they were beginning to slide decided to go for a radical option that instead accelerated their fall from grace.