McLaren, more than any other team, were guilty of shooting themselves in the foot in 2012 and know they must cut out the mistakes if they are to turn consistent race victories into World Championships again.
For the first time since 2006 they begin that quest without the driver who claimed their last world title five years ago, and who many consider the fastest in F1, Lewis Hamilton.
The British star, a protégé of the team for more than a decade, departed for a new challenge at Mercedes over the winter after a contract saga that dominated much of last season and which still some believe leaves McLaren licking their wounds and with a massive hole to fill.
Young hotshot Sergio Perez is the man appointed to try and fill that Hamilton-shaped void but with the Mexican still to prove himself at the highest level, the responsibility of leading the team's championship push in 2013, on pre-season paper at least, rests squarely on Jenson Button's shoulders, who for the first time is the effective team leader at Woking.
Seven wins, eight poles and arguably the fastest car in the whole field were still not enough for McLaren to deny Red Bull another championship clean sweep in 2012 as first operational, and then reliability, problems meant stacks of points were washed down the drain. To compound the frustration, even old foes Ferrari snuck in late in the season to relegate McLaren to third place in the Constructors' Championship.
With such an illustrious championship-winning pedigree, second, let alone third, is never considered good enough for an outfit that defines itself by an 'unswerving commitment to excellence'.
The modern incarnation of McLaren - which can be traced back to company Chairman Ron Dennis's 1981 takeover of a team that had already won one contructors' and two drivers' titles - has been built on a diet of consistent success. The team sit behind only Ferrari in terms of race victories (182) and pole positions (155) in F1. Much of their success came during the squad's golden era between 1984 and 1991 when they plundered seven Drivers' and six Constructors' Championships with all-time F1 greats Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost and Niki Lauda.
After a relatively fallow period in the mid-1990s, the Woking outfit struck back with Mercedes power and Mika Hakkinen in 1998-99 and on the whole have rarely been out of the top positions since the turn of the century.
Yet, amazingly, despite achieving more than 50 further race victories, just one world title has returned to Woking since - Hamilton's ultimate last-gasp title success in 2008.
That's a statistic - particularly the now 14-year constructors' title drought - that looms large over everyone at McLaren's space-age Technology Centre and one they know has to change as quickly as possible.
