McLaren's CEO Zak Brown says he is taking the necessary measures to return the British outfit to winning ways after news broke that racing director Eric Boullier had left the team.
For the fifth consecutive season, McLaren has failed to hit its pre-season targets at the opening races and pressure has built on the team's management after a recent run of poor results. On Wednesday McLaren confirmed Boullier had resigned from his position as racing director and announced a plan to reorganise the structure of the racing team under new sporting director Gil de Ferran, performance director Andrea Stella and team COO Simon Roberts.
Speaking on a conference call with select media, Brown admitted the team had been underperforming for some time.
"Our results this year have demonstrated we have a big performance issues," he said. "We are punching well below our weight given the history, the talent of people, the resources and the technology we have at our disposal.
"We have done a lot of work behind the scenes and we are now taking measures to rebuild McLaren and to make us a race-winning organisation. We know we owe it to our team, we know we owe it to our partners, we know we owe it to the drivers, we know we owe it to the media, and most importantly we know we owe it to our fans.
"I think we all share in the pain of not seeing a McLaren be successful like we know it can be. It's a completely unacceptable situation we find ourselves in, it is very painful for all of us here at McLaren, but the one thing we will not do is quit.
"However, we are not in a good enough place and we expect to be much better. We have announced this big change to get our house in order, we are not going to knee-jerk react -- the team needs a period of stabilisation so we can build a strong foundation. The situation was not created overnight and therefore will not be fixed overnight, so today is our first step in getting back to our winning ways."
Brown said Boullier's resignation had not come as a surprise after mounting pressure on the team in recent weeks.
"Eric's resignation wasn't a surprise," Brown added. "I spend a lot of a time with the team, a lot of time with Eric, he's someone I have known for a long time. Obviously we have been under a lot of pressure and underperforming for too long, so Eric and I have had many conversations around how we can improve McLaren, and so we'd had conversations in the past of what's the best way to do that.
"Ultimately, he wants what's best for McLaren as we all do, so when he ultimately made his decision it was not a surprise. It was something we had spoken about in our challenges and potential ways to address them."