Grand Prix Driver - Amazon "documentary"

[Pilgrims Drop]

Has anyone watched the miniseries "Grand Prix Driver" on Amazon Prime??

It is very decent even if the last episode turns into a bit of McLaren rah rah and it offers up some very interesting glimpses into the Honda/McLaren relationship as well as the internal McLaren way of working.

As my comments regarding this will be spoilers I'll post them in the post below so do not continue unless you've already watched the series :)

[Pilgrims Drop]

Did you watch it yet?? Because spoilers ahead!!!!




I did mention spoilers right??







So this is a documentary initially intended to be about Stoffel Vandoornes preparations for his rookie season as well as what goes into preparing a new car for launch. But what I found to be much more interesting were the details that are just onscreen for a split-second here and there (presentation slides etc). They are hugely interesting... and nothing more so that the mating of the engine and gearbox...

The breakdown or the communication or perhaps the dysfunction of communication between the 2 companies is staggering... I have spent roughly 15 years of my life working as a project manager and process manager at a company involved in a highly competitive industry. The company was setup so it had 4 major design centers located in Japan, Europe, US and China. The work was done jointly between the design centers so I know all to well how important information sharing and communication is... and at no time did we have anything as poor as what is shown here.

Communication is a 2-way street, there is not one side to blame it all on and the issues shown, if ever so briefly, are the effects of poor work by management on both sides.

That Honda didn't have English speaking engineers to at least work as communication bridges between the senior designers on both sides of the partnership is a failure. That McLaren hadn't insisted/demanded on having full access to the physical dimensions of the engine package in order to verify against their work is a failure. This is not anything difficult, it's project management 101 and anyone with the slightest experience should've known and corrected this.

And it made me question just how insular these design teams were from each other... and also how disjointed the development within McLaren seems to be that cannot be blamed on Honda. The floor was the last thing to go on the car for example... not the engine even if it required some modified parts to fit. And the floor was all on McLaren as well as other parts 2 of which is bluntly highlighted together with the floor being late.

Of course... we're seeing a documentary approved by McLaren so the information is probably tilted in their favor but... it doesn't show-off McLaren as having everything in tip top order and in line... quite the opposite really. And even if Honda has royally screwed the pooch with their engines when it comes to power output and reliability I question how McLaren worked with Honda... it didn't give me any vibes of a partnership as it should be, it was more as a customer/supplier relationship even if Honda gave McLaren huge amounts of money.

This was the third year of the partnership if my memory serve and to have such a dysfunctional communication at that stage just makes me question if they had any type of lessons learned or anything of the sort between the 2 companies. Lot's of egg on face but it's divided equally between the 2 teams...

It takes 2 to tango...