In sport, winning often cures everything, and the mood in the team has lifted as McLaren has started to win regularly. Thynne says success helps “drive the team forward”, but he adds that it’s important everyone understands they can’t rest on their laurels.
“F1 is an extremely complex sport and things can go wrong,” he says. “When you’re celebrating success you still have to push reliability, push performance and push every opportunity to score points.
“You have to be humble, but ultimately working in F1 is a privilege because you’re at the pinnacle of motorsport. You can never expect an outcome: an outcome is the result of the work you’ve put in. We ask everybody to avoid positive or negative hype and focus on what we need to do as a factory, which is to give Lando and Oscar the best equipment each and every race.”
McLaren’s last constructors’ title in 1998 came in a different era of F1, with near-unlimited spending. Teams now have a cost cap (this year it’s £104 million), so much of Thynne’s effort is expended working out how McLaren can “extract every amount of performance per pound”.
He adds: “It’s a really exciting challenge. It means the brainpower you put in is a competitive differentiator against others; you have to look at all angles of how you spend your money and where your focus should be.”
As an example, he has to decide between spending money building a stock of spare parts in case of accidents against developing upgrades, and how much effort to put towards development of the car for 2026, when F1 will undergo a significant regulatory change with new chassis and powertrain rules.
“We relish the challenge of regulation changes, because it gives the opportunity for the sport to reset,” he says.
A reset isn’t always good news for F1’s top team: after Hamilton’s 2008 drivers’ title, a major regulation change for 2009 left McLaren struggling to compete at the sharp end. But trying to maintain its position at the head of the pack is a good problem for McLaren to face – one it hasn’t had to deal with for 26 years.
