Unacceptable situation forces McLaren to get its house in order - Brown

Zak Brown says the pain of not seeing McLaren perform to the team and the fans' expectations has forced the Woking-based outfit to 'get its house in order'.

McLaren entered 2018 with the promise of a rebirth after a dismal three-year period of under-performance mainly linked to Honda's failure to supply a reliable and powerful engine.

The switch to Renault power heralded a new dawn for the team who often boasted last season of the efficiency of its chassis design.

While McLaren's state of affairs has marginally improved, its drivers are still no where near competing at the head of F1's mid-field, let alone among its front-runners.

McLaren has subsequently announced a series of leadership changes destined to righten the ship and set it back on a successful course.

• Eric Boullier is out and Gil de Ferran is in at McLaren!

"Our results this year have demonstrated we have a big performance issues," Brown said on a conference call with the media on Wednesday.

"We are punching well below our weight given the history, the talent of people, the resources and the technology we have at our disposal.

"We have done a lot of work behind the scenes and we are now taking measures to rebuild McLaren and to make us a race-winning organisation.

"We know we owe it to our team, we know we owe it to our partners, we know we owe it to the drivers, we know we owe it to the media, and most importantly we know we owe it to our fans.

"I think we all share in the pain of not seeing a McLaren be successful like we know it can be. It's a completely unacceptable situation we find ourselves in, it is very painful for all of us here at McLaren, but the one thing we will not do is quit.

"However, we are not in a good enough place and we expect to be much better," he added.

"We have announced this big change to get our house in order, we are not going to knee-jerk react -- the team needs a period of stabilisation so we can build a strong foundation.

"The situation was not created overnight and therefore will not be fixed overnight, so today is our first step in getting back to our winning ways."

The resignation of McLaren racing director Eric Boullier, a man at the helm of the Woking squad since 2014, was anything but a surprise insists Brown.

"Eric's resignation wasn't a surprise. I spend a lot of a time with the team, a lot of time with Eric, he's someone I have known for a long time," explained Brown.

"Obviously we have been under a lot of pressure and underperforming for too long, so Eric and I have had many conversations around how we can improve McLaren, and so we'd had conversations in the past of what's the best way to do that.

"Ultimately, he wants what's best for McLaren as we all do, so when he ultimately made his decision it was not a surprise. It was something we had spoken about in our challenges and potential ways to address them."

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