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McLaren's Formula 1 executives are clearly feeling pleased with themselves as the 2017 season reaches its denouement. Zak Brown says the team is almost having "a few giggles", such is the level of excitement building within Woking at McLaren's F1 prospects for '18.
The MCL32 is clearly a good F1 car, it has developed strongly, and those woeful Honda engines are about to be consigned to the dustbin of recent history. A new deal with Renault is struck, which means dollops more power to go with a car McLaren's data suggests is broadly a match for the Red Bull RB13, which has won three races against the might of Mercedes and Ferrari this year.
That's a job well done for McLaren's senior management - a good reason to pop the champagne corks, and who doesn't get a bit giggly after a few glasses of champagne?
You can understand the euphoria after so many seasons of struggle. McLaren checked out of the Honda alliance months ago. What became official in Singapore in September was in the making since those continuous breakdowns at Barcelona in February. 'Anything but Honda must be better than this' is the sum of the argument for change.
"These engine regulations, like any regulations, at the beginning you make massive gains, fast, then, like any regulations, the engine starts to plateau," says McLaren racing director Eric Boullier. "I think we're here now.
"I believe the right time to have Renault is next year, because Renault, following what I hear, will be doing these last bits, where the other ones - Mercedes and Ferrari - are already [there].
"One last step [and] we will be very close. We won't be the best, but very close. Honda is still in this [pre-plateau] phase. They will do massive improvements in the coming years, but when? Nobody knows. And that's the reason we couldn't wait anymore.
"If I can have the same pain and winning races every year, or doing multiple podiums, it's better than where we are."
There is undeniable logic to this position. McLaren desperately needs better results, and quickly. The team's reputation, the jobs of its many employees, the economic health of the organisation, all depend on it. As things stand, there would be an immediate uplift if you bolted Renault power into the back of the MCL32 right now.
Before Lewis Hamilton came storming past and Verstappen gave up his fruitless chase of the leaders in Brazil, the Renault-powered Red Bull was leading the Honda-powered McLaren of Fernando Alonso by more than 40 seconds. That equates to an advantage of 0.748s per lap for the Red Bull between the safety car restart at the end of lap five and the conclusion of lap 58, before Verstappen tried vainly to hold Hamilton behind approaching the Senna S.
Now, Verstappen made an extra pitstop not long afterwards, complaining his tyres were shot, so we can assume the gap is exaggerated slightly by Alonso going slower to make his own Pirelli tyres last to the end. But Alonso also took the benefit of Felipe Massa's DRS for much of the race, which would have boosted his straightline speed.
Using all of Renault's available beans on Saturday, Verstappen qualified six tenths off pole. Alonso's deficit was closer to 1.3s, so it's easy to see why a switch from Honda to Renault motivation looks like a no-brainer for McLaren.
But there are other aspects to that weekend that should be deeply disturbing for McLaren.
Toro Rosso is the team swapping engines with McLaren for next season, and STR's travails over recent grands prix give a glimpse of the pain that potentially comes with McLaren's latest venture.
Toro Rosso has suffered multiple engine failures over the past two races, which eventually exploded into an angry war of words between the team and its engine supplier.
Renault, which also suffered failures inside the works team and at Red Bull in Mexico, then had to detune the engines for reliability reasons in Brazil, and suggested the increased failure rate at Toro Rosso was no coincidence.
"We do have a little bit of a concern about the way our engine is operated in the Toro Rosso, which may explain why we have had so many issues coming from Toro Rosso specifically," said Renault boss Cyril Abiteboul. "There are never coincidences in this sport."
Toro Rosso hit back, revealing the main source of its recent difficulties to be "the lack of new power unit parts available" and the need to "constantly change parts from one PU to another during the weekend and, on many occasions, run old-specification assemblies".
"We mustn't forget they are fighting with Toro Rosso for a better position in the constructors' championship," the statement said. "As suggested by Mr Abiteboul, the situation may not be a coincidence, but it is certainly not due to STR's car."
Ditching Honda is not without drawbacks. The integral benefits of being a works team will disappear. Renault's main priority will always be Renault, not McLaren
Renault seemed incensed by the insinuation it might be deliberately hurting Toro Rosso to boost its own works team's bid to beat STR to sixth in the constructors' championship (they are separated by four points with one race left), forcing Red Bull motorsport boss Helmut Marko to issue a statement clarifying that Renault treats all its customers fairly.
But that doesn't change the fact that Toro Rosso has been deeply unimpressed by Renault's reliability record since returning to the French manufacturer's fold this season. Renault admits it bit off more than it could chew by undertaking a major revamp of its engine's architecture over the winter, while simultaneously restructuring its organisation amid the rapid expansion of its fledgling works race team.
Renault introduced new reliability problems pre-season that clearly still haven't been fixed. Last year's heavier MGU-K unit had to be retrofitted to all Renault-powered cars, and the engines had to be detuned further in Brazil to stop them blowing up in the race. Even so, Toro Rosso still hit trouble, as both its cars broke down, with the engines drinking oil.
Conspiracy or no, there were some harsh truths contained within Franz Tost's unusually strongly-worded statement against his current engine partner. Renault simply hasn't been cut out to supply three teams this year. It is splitting resources between supplying engines and running a race team, and it looks as though the engine side is suffering.
Long before Brazil there were complaints about the way it manages supply to the customer teams, apparently making poorly considered, last-minute decisions that create stress in the garages and introduce new problems - notwithstanding the explicit suggestion now that Renault simply cannot make enough parts available to do the job properly.
Verstappen has won two races this year, but if Sebastian Vettel's title charge hadn't imploded unexpectedly, it's likely Hamilton would have fought much harder to deny Red Bull in Malaysia, where Verstappen would ordinarily have been fighting for third had Ferrari not suffered its unusual reliability blip. Given how many Renault failures there were in Mexico, it's a miracle Verstappen finished that race at all.
McLaren clearly fancies a piece of that action regardless. It will say performance coupled with dodgy reliability is a better bet than no performance and no reliability, which is where it feels Honda is at.
But ditching Honda is not without drawbacks. The integral benefits of being a works team - espoused so brilliantly by Mercedes and latterly Ferrari - will disappear, even if Boullier feels his French connections can smooth the tempestuous waters of the English Channel. Renault's main priority will always be Renault, not McLaren.
And Honda was 100% committed and primarily focused on McLaren in F1. It was working to become world champion again solely with that team. Even had the proposed Sauber customer deal got over the line, McLaren would still have been undisputed top dog. That is unlikely to be the case with Renault, whatever the contracts say. The best McLaren can hope for is to bide time until 2021, by which time it will likely be 13 years since it last won a world championship.
Honda has undoubtedly endured a tough year again, but it is now convinced it has finally found the correct engine concept for this formula, having copied the Mercedes approach of splitting the turbine from the compressor. That introduced new problems in other areas this year, but Honda says it now has a handle on those and they will be fixed for 2018. If Honda progresses as predicted, Toro Rosso will take all the benefit.
We've heard this kind of optimistic talk from Honda before of course, and Renault will make similar claims about its own design no doubt, but Honda went from shambles to respectability overnight between 2015 and '16, and there's every chance that could happen again.
Honda's remaining distance from the development plateau Boullier mentions theoretically gives it much more room to work with for 2018 than Renault likely still has available - without the added distractions of trying to run a race team and supply two other outfits on top.
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner compares the current engine supply situation at Renault to Scrapheap Challenge - scrabbling around to find working parts simply to get to the end of the season.
Honda isn't in that position, even with its own poor record on reliability, and nor is Mercedes, which threw down the gauntlet for next year by powering Hamilton's charge from the pitlane to fourth with a totally fresh engine, fitted with what Horner called "depressing" new developments coming off the Brixworth dyno.
Red Bull knows all too well the ongoing cycle of competitive frustration and missed targets that comes with being a Renault customer team in the V6 era. Renault having its own team has not made that situation any easier.
It will be under pressure to fix its current reliability problems over the winter, as well as find the 'magic' engine modes needed to properly carry the fight to Mercedes, which in turn has the potential to introduce further reliability concerns.
Alonso suggested after the Brazilian Grand Prix that Toro Rosso should be worried by the "alarming" lack of power it will face when using Honda engines next year. But look at Verstappen - how frustrated he became as the Mercedes and Ferrari cars gradually ditched him; how he destroyed his tyres trying to achieve the impossible, two weeks on from being the star of the show.
That's the fate that likely awaits Alonso next year - provided McLaren can produce something that's a match for Red Bull aerodynamically, of which there's no guarantee now the development process at Milton Keynes is firing on all cylinders again.
That would leave McLaren scrapping for top-six finishes ordinarily and probably being top-eight every time, which isn't much better in results terms than it is capable of currently with Honda. The only guarantee, provided Force India, Williams and the Renault works team don't make massive aero gains themselves, is no more midfield battling.
Alonso is probably right to say Toro Rosso should be worried. Honda has generally been a disaster over the past three seasons. But Honda is on a much steeper learning curve than its rivals, and if it makes the leap it expects for 2018, while Renault remains short-handed and mired in its own reliability shambles, it will be McLaren that pays the price again.
Toro Rosso probably can't wait to get shot of Renault after the events of recent weeks, even if there are legitimate grounds to be worried about where it goes next. But McLaren has plenty of new reasons to feel worried too, once the champagne hangover wears off.
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