23-04-2015, 14:50
El artículo anterior está sacado a su vez de una entrevista
Back to Basics at McLaren Racing
Éric Boullier, 41, is the racing director of McLaren Racing, the Formula One team of the McLaren Technology Group. Appointed in January 2014 by Ron Dennis, the company director, Boullier oversees the general operations of the team, a post similar to the one he held as team principal of Lotus F1 for four years. Boullier, an aerospace engineer, began in sports car racing as a mechanic when he was a teenager, working at the Le Mans 24 Hours race in his native France. He then worked as an engineer and a team director in the lower series, including the World Series by Nissan in Spain, the A1 World Series, Formula 3000 and GP2. He also oversaw a young driver program at Genii Capital, the company that bought the Lotus team and appointed him as director in 2010. Boullier spoke recently with Brad Spurgeon of The International New York Times.
Q. How did you make the transition from engineer to team director?
A. There was an important stage in my life: At the end of 2001, Jean-Paul Driot had some problems with his business, and he no longer had the time to take care of his DAMS racing team, so DAMS no longer had a program. What changed my life at that moment was that I heard on the radio that [the French film director] Luc Besson was going to make the “Michel Vaillant” film. So I called Driot — it was in January 2002 — and I said, “Since we don’t have a racing program, we can do the Luc Besson job.” And he said, “Go ahead, go and speak to him, I don’t have the time to take care of this.”
So I had been a simple engineer for three years, and I took the train to Paris and I did all I could to meet Besson. I was very aggressive. I did everything. He was already in discussions with others — there were political connections. I bothered him so much, rang his bell, knocked on the door so hard that finally he said, “O.K., I don’t want to see you, but you can see my associate.”
There were a long 15 days, three weeks, of high-stress discussions. It was pretty surprising, because it wasn’t my job. In the end, Driot came to help me, because he knew friends of his, and so I got the deal for DAMS. But it was emotionally complicated because I knew that if I failed, it was maybe the end of DAMS.
I managed the company for the movie. We had to prepare the racing cars that took part in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Then we had to make a replica as well. The replica had to run at 150 kilometers per hour, because after the race in Le Mans there were three or four months of filming, with stunts and accidents, and that all occupied DAMS for a year.
Because DAMS survived, Driot called me in December [in 2002] and said, “Come back. You will no longer be an engineer, you will be the technical director and general director.” And he said: “I bought three cars, the Renault V-6. Find the drivers and manage the team.”
That’s how I became a manager and not an engineer.
Q. Did you enjoy the switch?
A. I think in fact I was destined to do it. I was a good engineer because I was good psychologically. When you are a racing engineer you have to be a bit of a psychologist with your driver, but technically I was not the best.
Advertisement
Q. You joined Formula One directly at the top, as a team principal, and you were immediately successful. How?
A. It’s because it’s a team. It’s like everything. Motorsport is a beautiful sport at the base. There’s lots of history, but it’s a beautiful sport, a beautiful human sport. I was lucky to have the confidence of the owners of Renault F1, of Genii Capital, who put me in the job. I was lucky that they supported me for a year or two while the team rebuilt itself. I may have savoir-faire, but this transition was very difficult to live through, as I was the Frenchie going to Oxford. But the people of Genii Capital believed in me so much that I could put in place a structure that worked. It’s rare. It’s the key.
Q. Is the role at McLaren smaller? It doesn’t have the team principal title.
A. I think the role of team principal no longer exists today, practically. If you take certain cases, like Red Bull, there is a commercial team, and Christian Horner, the team director, does not have to worry about seeking out sponsors. He concentrates only on the team. In a way I am in the same situation as him today. I have the license of the team principal here with the F.I.A., and so I’m acting like a team principal in the paddock. Back in the factory I’m not in charge of the marketing and the sales, that is Ron Dennis. And I share the complete management of McLaren Racing with Jonathan Neale, the chief executive.
I’m in the performance area of building the staff, how the company works, the processes, which people should be put in place, the drivers, and being the official technical and sporting representative.
The idea of team principal came from a period when a guy was the team owner running the team, in the ’80s and ’90s, and the team was a maximum of 200 people. Today, a Formula One team is more than 700 people. You can’t manage 700 people like you were managing a company 20 years ago. It’s completely different in terms of culture, of human resources, everything is different.
Q. Is this team, with its record as the second-most successful team in Formula One, more demanding than Lotus?
A. Yes, but I think they have seen over a year what I have done. It can’t yet be seen in performance on the track for other reasons, but in terms of change of culture and atmosphere, and even in the quality of the chassis, the new McLaren has returned to the level of the old McLaren, in competitive terms.
Q. But it must be difficult to cope with the slow speed of the cars, which is obvious to everyone?
A. Yes, but I have the luck to have the support of Ron. Ron is a racer and I am a racer. We speak the same language. There are lots of politics in Formula One; but between Ron and I there is no nonsense. He knows that what I have put in place at McLaren, all the restructuring that I did, is based on his own principles. There is no nonsense. It’s the only way to get rid of all the people who serve no purpose, and to put all the people on the best level. Ron knows what I have done, he knows also what we are doing with Honda, and I am pushing Honda very hard. Ron supports me rather than questions me.
Of course, he will not wait five years. But today he knows that in terms of the data, we know that the car chassis is much better than that of last year. So we have progressed enormously.
And McLaren has taken on a sense of leadership. That’s what was missing from McLaren. It’s a racing leader and it has gotten rid of the corporatism. The McLaren Technology Group got very big. It is 3,100 people now. The problem was that corporatism invaded McLaren Racing. And I did this [mimes scissors cutting] — back to racing basics.
Q. How long will it take to return to being competitive?
A. We can become competitive this year. We will be regularly competitive next year. I think that before the end of next year, we will be there. It’s the year and a half that we missed, to catch up. We are building up everything in strength. But the project is extremely ambitious. Honda has the commitment to get back, and we — Ron and the McLaren stakeholders — are all putting everything in place to become a competitive team. So that will come. But we just have to catch up, and we need just a little bit of time.
Q. We have seen historic teams, like Tyrrell and the original Lotus team, fall down slowly and disappear. What makes you think McLaren can rise up again?
A. Because, first, I know what is happening behind the scenes. Already, as I said, the car itself is not yet a winning car, but it soon will be. Our engine partner will also gain in maturity, and we know we will grow in strength. McLaren is back, no worries.
The other thing is that McLaren is part of a McLaren Technology Group, where we have a few businesses, like McLaren Applied Technologies, that are working well. The series of F1 is driving the brand, and the technology that we’re selling and that we’re developing around F1 is consolidating a huge business. We’re already nearly a billion-dollar-turnover business — not F1, but McLaren. The F1 team needs to stay just F1: back to racing basics.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/18/sports/autoracing/back-to-basics-at-mclaren-racing.html?WT.mc_id=2015-APRIL-OTB-INTL_AUD_DEV-0330-0503&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=IntlAudDev&_r=1
Back to Basics at McLaren Racing
Éric Boullier, 41, is the racing director of McLaren Racing, the Formula One team of the McLaren Technology Group. Appointed in January 2014 by Ron Dennis, the company director, Boullier oversees the general operations of the team, a post similar to the one he held as team principal of Lotus F1 for four years. Boullier, an aerospace engineer, began in sports car racing as a mechanic when he was a teenager, working at the Le Mans 24 Hours race in his native France. He then worked as an engineer and a team director in the lower series, including the World Series by Nissan in Spain, the A1 World Series, Formula 3000 and GP2. He also oversaw a young driver program at Genii Capital, the company that bought the Lotus team and appointed him as director in 2010. Boullier spoke recently with Brad Spurgeon of The International New York Times.
Q. How did you make the transition from engineer to team director?
A. There was an important stage in my life: At the end of 2001, Jean-Paul Driot had some problems with his business, and he no longer had the time to take care of his DAMS racing team, so DAMS no longer had a program. What changed my life at that moment was that I heard on the radio that [the French film director] Luc Besson was going to make the “Michel Vaillant” film. So I called Driot — it was in January 2002 — and I said, “Since we don’t have a racing program, we can do the Luc Besson job.” And he said, “Go ahead, go and speak to him, I don’t have the time to take care of this.”
So I had been a simple engineer for three years, and I took the train to Paris and I did all I could to meet Besson. I was very aggressive. I did everything. He was already in discussions with others — there were political connections. I bothered him so much, rang his bell, knocked on the door so hard that finally he said, “O.K., I don’t want to see you, but you can see my associate.”
There were a long 15 days, three weeks, of high-stress discussions. It was pretty surprising, because it wasn’t my job. In the end, Driot came to help me, because he knew friends of his, and so I got the deal for DAMS. But it was emotionally complicated because I knew that if I failed, it was maybe the end of DAMS.
I managed the company for the movie. We had to prepare the racing cars that took part in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Then we had to make a replica as well. The replica had to run at 150 kilometers per hour, because after the race in Le Mans there were three or four months of filming, with stunts and accidents, and that all occupied DAMS for a year.
Because DAMS survived, Driot called me in December [in 2002] and said, “Come back. You will no longer be an engineer, you will be the technical director and general director.” And he said: “I bought three cars, the Renault V-6. Find the drivers and manage the team.”
That’s how I became a manager and not an engineer.
Q. Did you enjoy the switch?
A. I think in fact I was destined to do it. I was a good engineer because I was good psychologically. When you are a racing engineer you have to be a bit of a psychologist with your driver, but technically I was not the best.
Advertisement
Q. You joined Formula One directly at the top, as a team principal, and you were immediately successful. How?
A. It’s because it’s a team. It’s like everything. Motorsport is a beautiful sport at the base. There’s lots of history, but it’s a beautiful sport, a beautiful human sport. I was lucky to have the confidence of the owners of Renault F1, of Genii Capital, who put me in the job. I was lucky that they supported me for a year or two while the team rebuilt itself. I may have savoir-faire, but this transition was very difficult to live through, as I was the Frenchie going to Oxford. But the people of Genii Capital believed in me so much that I could put in place a structure that worked. It’s rare. It’s the key.
Q. Is the role at McLaren smaller? It doesn’t have the team principal title.
A. I think the role of team principal no longer exists today, practically. If you take certain cases, like Red Bull, there is a commercial team, and Christian Horner, the team director, does not have to worry about seeking out sponsors. He concentrates only on the team. In a way I am in the same situation as him today. I have the license of the team principal here with the F.I.A., and so I’m acting like a team principal in the paddock. Back in the factory I’m not in charge of the marketing and the sales, that is Ron Dennis. And I share the complete management of McLaren Racing with Jonathan Neale, the chief executive.
I’m in the performance area of building the staff, how the company works, the processes, which people should be put in place, the drivers, and being the official technical and sporting representative.
The idea of team principal came from a period when a guy was the team owner running the team, in the ’80s and ’90s, and the team was a maximum of 200 people. Today, a Formula One team is more than 700 people. You can’t manage 700 people like you were managing a company 20 years ago. It’s completely different in terms of culture, of human resources, everything is different.
Q. Is this team, with its record as the second-most successful team in Formula One, more demanding than Lotus?
A. Yes, but I think they have seen over a year what I have done. It can’t yet be seen in performance on the track for other reasons, but in terms of change of culture and atmosphere, and even in the quality of the chassis, the new McLaren has returned to the level of the old McLaren, in competitive terms.
Q. But it must be difficult to cope with the slow speed of the cars, which is obvious to everyone?
A. Yes, but I have the luck to have the support of Ron. Ron is a racer and I am a racer. We speak the same language. There are lots of politics in Formula One; but between Ron and I there is no nonsense. He knows that what I have put in place at McLaren, all the restructuring that I did, is based on his own principles. There is no nonsense. It’s the only way to get rid of all the people who serve no purpose, and to put all the people on the best level. Ron knows what I have done, he knows also what we are doing with Honda, and I am pushing Honda very hard. Ron supports me rather than questions me.
Of course, he will not wait five years. But today he knows that in terms of the data, we know that the car chassis is much better than that of last year. So we have progressed enormously.
And McLaren has taken on a sense of leadership. That’s what was missing from McLaren. It’s a racing leader and it has gotten rid of the corporatism. The McLaren Technology Group got very big. It is 3,100 people now. The problem was that corporatism invaded McLaren Racing. And I did this [mimes scissors cutting] — back to racing basics.
Q. How long will it take to return to being competitive?
A. We can become competitive this year. We will be regularly competitive next year. I think that before the end of next year, we will be there. It’s the year and a half that we missed, to catch up. We are building up everything in strength. But the project is extremely ambitious. Honda has the commitment to get back, and we — Ron and the McLaren stakeholders — are all putting everything in place to become a competitive team. So that will come. But we just have to catch up, and we need just a little bit of time.
Q. We have seen historic teams, like Tyrrell and the original Lotus team, fall down slowly and disappear. What makes you think McLaren can rise up again?
A. Because, first, I know what is happening behind the scenes. Already, as I said, the car itself is not yet a winning car, but it soon will be. Our engine partner will also gain in maturity, and we know we will grow in strength. McLaren is back, no worries.
The other thing is that McLaren is part of a McLaren Technology Group, where we have a few businesses, like McLaren Applied Technologies, that are working well. The series of F1 is driving the brand, and the technology that we’re selling and that we’re developing around F1 is consolidating a huge business. We’re already nearly a billion-dollar-turnover business — not F1, but McLaren. The F1 team needs to stay just F1: back to racing basics.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/18/sports/autoracing/back-to-basics-at-mclaren-racing.html?WT.mc_id=2015-APRIL-OTB-INTL_AUD_DEV-0330-0503&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=IntlAudDev&_r=1
#orgulloALO
"Cuando era niño, soñaba con coches, con olor a gasolina, con viento en la cara, trofeos."
¤ Fernando Alonso ¤