New McLaren Boss Outlines Plan for Revival

Published 07/10/2018, 2:20 PM EDT

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McLaren sporting director Gil de Ferran believes that there is no shortage of talent at the team. He later explained his philosophy to help turn their fortunes around.

Following Eric Boullier’s departure earlier this week, De Ferran said that he is “ready for the challenge”.

The former racing driver worked for executive director Zak Brown in an advisory role since May. He said: “It’s clear to me that in the team there is a lot of talent.

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“Wherever I look I see smart guys. Guys that have been here a long time, those that are younger and newer, and there is certainly a lot of talent and brain power.

“As Zak said, the key area is to communicate and bring clarity to certain things. Hopefully that will help move forward.”

“I was not one to be afraid to look in the mirror and say ‘I could have done better here’ and ‘I could have done better there. What do I need to do to improve?’

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“The second thing is I realised very early on in my life that success never comes along [on its own]. You don’t have success by yourself. Very few people are able to achieve many things in life by themselves. Most of them are part of a team and so knowing how to put a team together, working together and getting people to feel focused and motivated and really understand where they’re going and truly engage [is key]. The best ideas come when you’re in the middle of the night thinking about all the good stuff for the next day.

“This is how I personally operate and this is the philosophy I’m bringing to my job. Originally as an advisor to Zak, that’s how I was looking at things and now I have an opportunity to do this with more responsibility.”

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He confessed that there was no quick fix for their performance woes. McLaren had a similar qualifying result at their home race to last week in Austria and other rounds this season.

Once again, Fernando Alonso was their lead runner while team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne dropped out in Q1.

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Dhruv George

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Dhruv George is a senior Formula One and NASCAR analyst for EssentiallySports, having authored nearly 12000 articles spanning different sports like F1, NASCAR, Tennis, NFL, and eSports. He graduated with a PG Diploma in Journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications. Dhruv has also conducted interviews with F1 driver Pierre Gasly and Moto2 rider Tony Arbolino.
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