Mark Temple, race engineer for Fernando Alonso, knew the message he had to make would not be well received by his driver.
“Nasr is seven-and-a-half seconds back,” he said, trying to make the news as appetising as possible. “We must save fuel.”
The Spaniard, on lap 25 of the 70-lap race, made no attempt to reciprocate the niceties.
“I don’t want! I don’t want!” fumed Alonso. “Already I have big problems now. Driving like this, we look like amateurs.
“I will race, and then I will concentrate on the fuel.”
Alonso continued to drive, his car still desperately off the pace, until he was called back to his garage to retire his ailing Honda power unit.
His teammate Jenson Button would last 12 more laps before his car, too, was diagnosed with terminal engine troubles.
The Canadian Grand Prix is the latest chapter in the sorry tale of McLaren’s 2015 season. Of the 13 races entered into by its two drivers, the cars failed to finish seven times, including one failure to start. Points have been scored just once, courtesy of Button’s eighth place in Monaco.
The climate in Montréal was ripe for a boil-over. Lewis Hamilton, former teammate to both Alonso and Button, was steaming away unabated in the race to stretch his championship lead, lapping both McLarens in the process.
Alonso was also forced to tangle with Sebastian Vettel, who seems at home with Ferrari in a way Alonso can only vaguely recall feeling during his early days with the Italians.
So far this year two eminently talented world champions have pootled around the back of the grid in a glorified international testing year. Something was always going to give.
Is McLaren in crisis? Emotionally, yes.
The 2015 season felt right. Legendary team principal Ron Dennis returned. Fernando Alonso reunited with Woking to satisfy the unfinished business of 2007. The iconic partnership with Honda, one of the most successful in history, was reignited.
But with increasing hype comes an inflated risk of disappointment, and none has under-delivered as dramatically as McLaren-Honda.
While Honda is contributing the lion’s share of problems, the McLaren chassis, too, is far from optimal, as the team’s sub-par qualifying at the chassis-dependant Monaco demonstrated.
For all their history together, McLaren and Honda are still learning to behave as a team, as betrayed by team principal Eric Boullier during the week.
“We keep talking about issues, and obviously we hope to be listened to more,” he said.
“We have some software, IT – whatever it is, we have this experience at home, so McLaren can actually offer Honda support in this domain to help them shift resources.”
A long-running trait of Honda’s F1 programme over the decades has been its desire to gets its work done on its own – Formula One has always been meaningful as way to develop its engineering talent as much as it is a marketing exercise.
McLaren, on the other hand, seeks clinical execution of results in a way that is simply unachievable with an engine manufacturer that is, despite its pedigree, putting itself through its novice paces all over again.
Somewhere in the discrepancy between McLaren and Honda’s respective development chapters exists the partnership’s potential and therefore the key to escaping their midfield performance rut.
However, McLaren-Honda redeems itself on one critical point: its timing is impeccable.
There is no better season in which to have a performance crisis. Forgive this column for a moment of brutal honesty, but the 2015 championship is almost guaranteed to Lewis Hamilton. For all Ferrari’s threatening, it is running out of time to mount a credible title challenge beyond the odd victory.
“It’s better to have it happen now than when you are fighting for a podium or a race win,” said Alonso, consoling himself post-race. “We can’t forget we were here last year finishing fifth or sixth … instead of being fighting for sixth or seventh, we took a risky decision, which was going to McLaren-Honda.
“This year we are paying the price of it being the first year and having a lot of things to do, but otherwise I’d be here talking about having finished fifth or sixth.”
Alonso has been around the block, likewise Button – neither of them draw satisfaction from racing for points, and nor does McLaren as one of the sport’s most successful teams.
Much as Mercedes sacrificed 2013 to benefit their 2014 and 2015 campaigns, McLaren is burning through a year in which the chance of real success could only have ever been slim.
“I believe in this project,” summed Alonso. “Everything I see has coherence and optimism for the future, which is something I couldn’t see before. So, patience.”
Patience will be necessary in abundance, but 2015 will pay off for McLaren in time.
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