Asked how it is that a team that in 2003 was challenging for the title - albeit in a year-old-car - and a year later is languishing on five points, McLaren CEO was nothing less than forthright.
"Because we got it wrong in many ways," he admitted. "You need to finish races to score points and we've not done a very good job in that regard.
"A Formula One car and the performance of a team is extremely complex," he continued. "You are always striving to improve every aspect of the car. I think we made a number of wrong decisions in our programme and we're paying the cost of that. Nowadays Formula One cars are ever more complex, aerodynamically and structurally. When you compare it to even ten years ago, when we wanted to make a fundamental change to the structure or the aerodynamics the component to change was often singular and quite rapid. If you wanted to change your suspension you could go down to the fabrication shop and, being a racing team, you would make that change in a few days. Now, if you go and look at any of the cars on the grid and look at the integration of very complex front wing systems, the way in which the front suspension attaches to the car and the same for the rear suspension, the whole package is so complex, the components are so complex that we're not able to change the package overnight any longer.
"So we recognised, fairly early on in the year, that we needed to make some fundamental changes to the car, but to execute those has been quite a significant project so, as you may know, the 19B project was in fact initiated before the first race of this year, and we're now starting to see the fruits of that. So, in some ways, these complex cars are a disadvantage. Obviously every engineer is pursuing every small fraction of percent of performance but if you get it wrong then to recover the situation is a penalty.
Asked when the team first realised that the 19 wasn't 'up to the job', Whitmarsh replied: "We started to understand some of the problems with 19A in Barcelona on about week three.
"I think at that point, as a racing team, you have to have a degree of optimism and belief that you're going to power through problems. So in terms of portraying our aspirations, our aspirations never changed, we're always out there to win races and win World Championships.
"If you're then going to lead a team of a thousand people who are involved in a programme, and for a team such as our own, saying in week three 'actually we've given up with the championship this year guys, let's regroup for next year' is an unacceptable position for us and therefore we've had to take a buoyant and aggressive stance with how we plan our season. So I think we knew, and the reality is, as I think you know, before the start of the year, we had announced 19B as a programme. We would have not entertained a 19B programme had we not realised that we needed to make some response,
"I think we have improved 19A during the course of this year," he continued. "But we also recognise that there are some fundamental issues that we needed to address in 19B. Now, with regard to 19B, I think we're being cautiously optimistic on this occasion, but if you're asked an opinion then you may as well give it. Do I believe 19B is a quicker car than 19A? Yes it is. If I sat here and believed differently then it would be extremely painful, I guess. Only one driver has driven and we've only driven on one circuit at the moment - maybe when we get to Jerez we'll think differently - but based on the exposure we've had so far, and we had a relatively detuned engine following the Nürburgring issues, I think we look quite competitive at a circuit like Silverstone. We hope that we can follow that through into some other tracks and that's why we're not racing to take the car here. We're not ready at the moment, after a three day test, one of which was predominantly wet.
"There are always those who will say 'throw it on a plane, fly it to Canada, fly it to Indianapolis'. I think that would have been the wrong thing to do, but we have got to apply pressure on ourselves. We are not doing a good enough job, we don't enjoy the level of performance we have at the moment and we are very keen to improve it.
