Change was in the air when the MP4-15 took shape in late summer 1999. The ticking of the millennium was an inevitable hard point in the calendar, the new year of all new years, a potent cocktail of hopes and dreams and promises and, yes, nagging uncertainties about what to do with this annoying millennium bug. January has greater cultural significance than a wish list of soon-to-be-abandoned resolutions.
Such a ferment for radical change passed the McLaren design bureau. The move to the fancy new premises designed by Norman Foster was still years away, and the Byzantine “matrix management” system was not yet a wink in the eyes of deputy team principal Martin Whitmarsh.
