McLaren seem to be in a bit of a turmoil with respect to the sentiments around the team’s working environment as reports in the Daily Mail suggest that the staff have staged a revolt against the McLaren management for not treating them well and also not providing any kind of direction to the team.
While earlier the staff wanted to speak to Whitmarsh, the former McLaren team principal, they have now gone onto actually revolt against the management for providing them with mere 25p chocolate bars as a token of their appreciation.
The staff feel humiliated by this gesture as they felt they were actually being mocked.
Boullier has now responded to these reports, saying that in a large group of workers such incidents take place all the time.
“Obviously we are 800 people, we have a lot of support from the workforce and from the engineering,” he said.
“I think it’s a matter of a couple of people who are grumpy, and actually in some ways it might be good for us, because we’ve had a lot of feedback, and good feedback.
“There have been a couple of stories about some ‘Chocolate-gate’ in the media today, which have been a bit funny to read.
“Again, it was good because we’ve had tons of emails from people saying this is a joke. There are maybe a couple of people grumpy, in any organisation you have some people who agree or disagree.
“We don’t know what is the problem of these people, and I think we have invited them to come and see us to see what the problems are, rather than talking through the back door.” he added.
Boullier was then also asked if he would step down following these revolts, to which he replied with a negative.
“No, I will not resign.
“To your question, I know you have written some articles. I’ve won races and championships with every team I’ve managed before, including F1, and this is something you cannot take away from me.” Boullier said.
Boullier is confident of McLaren’s chances in the next phase of this season and feels that the switch to Renault has helped them gain that much needed reliability.
“The car this year obviously is not working exactly as we expected it to be, but we are still using this as an experimental experience, especially this morning for example there were new parts on the car.
“We want to learn from this car, and learn as well working with Renault, because it’s a different partner from last year, so we have something new to learn, some of the technical options we have not explored yet.
“Again it’s a journey. In the last race one of the pipes broke during the race, and this is something which we investigated, a problem we had to face, and this is part of the journey, learning to work with Renault, out new power unit partner.” Boullier concluded.
With so much going on off the track for McLaren and Alonso understandably a little fatigued after the Le Mans 24 win, do you think they stand a good enough to chance to score points in France?
