The British team continues its restructuring with the incorporation of an expert engineer to optimize scarce resources in the teams

There is a generalized tendency among the structures of Formula 1 that go through a bad moment, which is none other than the one known as the 'restructuring process', a stage that in many cases simply serves to move pieces from one place to another and whose result It does not end up being satisfactory. For this period Ferrari recently passed, until more or less found the stability that has led the Scuderia to be able to fight for victory and title. And McLaren has been in it since the beginning of this year, when the people in charge of the British team realized that the evils of the last four seasons did not fall solely on the Honda power unit of their cars. In recent months two key players have jumped in this order, such as Tim Goss, technical director until last April, and more recently Eric Boullier, the director. Now it's the turn of Matt Morris, director of engineering, as confirmed on Thursday morning by a source from the formation of Woking (Great Britain), in a message that also took for granted the incorporation of James Key as relay of Goss in the technical direction.

If until now McLaren had been limited to playing the ball of the chairs, the disembarkation of Key is, without doubt, a movement of the most interesting that the company has done in recent times, given the history of successes that support this 46-year-old British engineer licensed by the University of Nottingham. The entry to F1 was offered by Eddie Jordan in 1998, before the team became Midland, Spyker and finally Force India, where he assumed the technical direction. In 2010 he signed for Sauber and his role in Hinwill (Switzerland) was decisive for the recovery of the Swiss constructor, which despite facing the departure of BMW managed to add three podiums in 2012, when their cars incorporated Ferrari engines. By that time, Key had already earned the reputation as a master of efficiency, this is to maximize the available resources.

That ability caught the attention of Red Bull, who recruited him in 2012 and put him in charge of Toro Roso's technical department, where he has remained until now -McLaren has yet to communicate when he will join his new position- and where he has managed to establish a modest team -Toro Rosso is born on the basis of Minardi-. That ability to achieve great objectives with few means at his reach is what has most likely attracted the attention of the McLaren greats, who continues to go through one of the most critical moments in history, despite having broken with Honda at the end of 2017 to ally with Renault, a change of cards that theoretically had to multiply the potential of the orange racing car and that, however, has not been like this: the best result of Fernando Alonso so far is the fifth place achieved by the Spanish in the inaugural citation of the course (Australia), while Stoffel Vandoorne must settle for the eighth that was awarded in Bahrain.

In this way, Key faces what is probably the most important challenge of his life: returning McLaren to the place it should occupy by trajectory and cache.