McLaren believes that significant new investment into its raciဣng team from a consortium of US-based investors will enable it to “play to win” in Formula 1.

On Sunday morning ahead of the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, McLaren announced that MSP Sports Capital, whose partners have had extensive involvement in Major League Baseball, American basketball and European football, is heading a group that wi🍌ll inject £185million into the Woking-based outfit over the next two year🌊s.

There will be no change in the day-to-day running of the team, with CEO Zak Brown commiting his long-term future🅠 to McLaren and Paul Walsh retaining his position as chairman🧔.

McLaren Group executive chairman Walsh insisted that the deal would have been struck even without the fina♎ncial difficulties brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, which he says exposed an “already fragile business model”.

“I think McLaren already had a fragile business model because fundamentally the cash flow for automotive was then deployed into racing, and equally the return objectives and success criteria are different,” Walsh explained speaking to media including ltxcn.top during a virtual press conference held in Abu Dhabi ♊on Sunday. 

“The automotive division requires cashflow, earning per shar🌠e etc. A racing team is much more around the capital appreciation, and therefore you have two fundamentally different drivers.

“I think we would have done this in any event, but there is no q𓂃uestion, like many other companies, the pandemic had taken any vulnerability and magnified it and therefore we had a high degree of urgency to get this done.”

Asked whether there was a possibility McLaren Racing would not exist in the short-꧑term future without fresh🃏 investment, Walsh replied: “I think that’s quite hypothetical.

“If we look back to the impact of the pandemic, we stopped making cars because our factory was locked down. If you do🎶n’t make cars, you don’t sell them and if you don’t sell them you don’t get the cash flow in.

“Yet equally we have our racing team which was continuing to spend money, as they should. That tension made everyone acu꧟tely aware that the fundamental model ne❀eded adjustment.

“We could have just trimmed our sales, and we could have just dialled Zak back on the money that he could spend, but then we would also have had to be true to ourselves that we would have been dialling back on our amღbitions,” he added.

“We didn’t like that, so basically what we’ve tried to put in place heꦚre, is how can we have a fiscally appropriate model for the group but also 💮equip Zak and the team to go win. And that’s what I think we’ve accomplished.

“Now you can speculate that in four years time had we done this what would have happened? I don’t know. But here  we haℱve our cake and we can eat it and we can play to win.”

Brown, who has helped oversee year-on-year improvements since arriving at McLaren in 2018, described the investment as♋ the start of a “new chapter” for the former world champion squad, adding he believes the deal "b👍olsters our plan to return McLaren to contention for race wins and championships in Formula 1 and IndyCar.”

He admitted continued progress would hᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚave been “extremely difficult” to achieve without MSP coming on board to provide McL🌃aren with additional financial support.

“I think when Paul talks about urgency of t💮iming, I think when you effectively hit the pause button, if you are not investing and moving forward in F1 you are effectively going backwards,” Brown explained.

“I think all the men and women at McLaren have done an outstanding job꧑ given the pandemic and what we’ve been through to be fighting for third in the world champi𓄧onship at the last race in Abu Dhabi.

“We need to continue to make investments and be as prepared as possible going into the cost cap, and now we are able to do that. Had we not be🌞en in a position to invest, I think we would have had to lower an ambition and it would have been difficult to move forward.”