McLaren move further away from Mercedes

The gap between McLaren and Mercedes is increasing

It looks as though McLaren are moving to accelerate their separation from Mercedes. Mercedes owned 40% of the Woking based team, but following on from Mercedes establishing their own F1 operation through the acquisition of Brawn at the end of 2009, it was announced that McLaren would buy back their shareholding. In a statement released by Reuters Martin Whitmarsh is quoted as saying that there is now only around 11% of the Mercedes stake remaining, which he described as an ‘insignificant’ number.

McLaren under Ron Dennis have long held ambitions to emulate Ferrari, their split with Mercedes allows them more freedom develop McLaren as a luxury brand – but let’s hope they don’t go into HiFi again. The interesting question is how their engine supply situation will develop. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a McLaren engined McLaren on the grid when the new engine regulations come into play in 2013.

By the way this is Post 100, thanks for all the feedback and support, I’ll let you know when we get to 1000!

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