McLaren - 3/10
The shock of the season, and not in a good way. McLaren switched from Mercedes power in order to renew its partnership with Honda because it felt it would be impossible to win without a works engine. However, winning could hardly seem a more distant target right now.
As pre-season unfolded it became clear reliability problems were so inherent that McLaren-Honda would be woefully underprepared in Melbourne, and it duly failed to even start with one car while Jenson Button was desperately slow. Slight progress followed to finally result in four points in Monaco, but reliability was severely lacking for much of the season.
Despite a fifth place for Fernando Alonso in the chaos of Hungary, cracks began to appear in the relationship between McLaren and Honda in Italy as both performance and reliability failed to improve significantly. Progress simply meant more regular Q2 appearances, and with the team taking on a new aerodynamic philosophy after the arrival of Peter Prodromou from Red Bull, the chassis itself was still far from the best on the grid as well.
As an aside, the team’s handling of Kevin Magnussen - scuppering his planned full season of IndyCar in order to run him in Australia in a race he would eventually not even start, then later dropping him completely - was just another farcical side note in a dismal year.
