Scott Mitchell-Malm

Again, because there was no detriment for the works team to do this because there was just less...

There was less to be gained by maxing out dyno time just for the works team or whatever the different kind of nuances would be.

But I think part of it would not really have been foreseeable because the exact complexity of the 2026 engines in reality, some of the problems that have emerged because Mercedes HPP, the engine division there,

admits that it hasn't serviced McLaren well enough, but there have been faults purely on the engine side, the electric side, the battery problems, for example.

So that does need to be better.

And that's not the sort of thing you can foresee, but whether identifying the actual root cause of it is tricky because dyno time is limited and there's still loads of stuff that they want to do with the works team because it's the works team and that has to be the number one priority overall.

beyond obviously the need and the desire to service your customers as robustly as you possibly can.

So all of that is to say, McLaren definitely feels the pinch as a customer now, whereas it didn't before.

But that's because we are in brand new rules.

And, you know, I have to really give you a hat tip for this, Ed, because the couple of years or three years or so, we were hearing the likes of Stella talk about their confidence growth.

going into the new engine rule cycle you were always quite cynical about that and you know the point was always that obviously the potential yield as a works team would always be slight would always be even if it was fractional it would always be higher than that as a customer i think mclaren was broadly aware of that in principle i think in practice the compound gains have ended up bigger

than McLaren expected the problem is there's no way out you can't be a customer and then complain that it turns out you're a customer like that's not how it works if you want to be a works team and have the benefits of a works team be a works team and I asked Zac Brown about this the McLaren Racing CEO in Monaco and he said that

They will look at it when the next set of engine regulations get locked in for 2030 or 2031.

But their number one priority at the moment is to renew with Mercedes and be a customer because it's easier.

It's not as expensive.

There's not as big a risk.

Politically, there's nothing that you need to kind of traverse there if you align with another manufacturer or whatever.

So you...

you kind of can't go for the easy route, the shortcut route really to being a top F1 team and then being annoyed in any way that you're not the number one priority.

And that's not really what McLaren's doing, but it just, it speaks to the dilemma that they're in and where they want to operate in.