Earlier today McLaren announced an engine supply deal with Honda, starting in two season’s time. Now spies within the Woking team say the rekindled partnership is just the tip of a very retro iceberg which will see the number one driver slot for 2015 occupied by French racing legend Alain Prost.
‘We’re going really old school with this,’ said a team insider. ‘And what better way to wind things back to the late ‘80s than by getting Alain in the car. He’s quick, he’s experienced and he still has the same hairstyle.’
According to our mole, the shock signing of a 58-year-old driver is part of a raft of extraordinarily backward-looking moves from McLaren which also includes asking Vodafone to make their logo look ‘more Marlboro-y’ and lobbying for the return of the Portuguese Grand Prix.
Most shockingly, insiders say McLaren is working flat out on Prost’s 2015 team mate which they intend to be an animatronic recreation of Ayrton Senna. Spies say the Senna robot borrows much of the technology that allows Ron Dennis to display basic human emotions and will contain a special algorithm that makes it wait until the end of the season before it twats into Prost.
‘This new deal with Honda has really inspired us,’ our factory insider gushed. ‘Although obviously it won’t last forever and we’re already planning for 2019 when we switch to a generic Ford engine and then 2020 when our MP4-35 will be forced to use a catastrophically crap Peugeot V10.’
‘Mind you,’ he added. ‘It’ll still be faster than this season’s car.’
