McLaren has announced that Sam Michael is to step down as sporting director at the end of the season because the team is now ‘more than crap enough’.

‘Before we brought Sam on board we were dangerously close to winning world championships,’ admitted a Woking insider. ‘Thankfully, with his experience of making Williams completely rubbish, we were able to become the disappointing team we are today with a level of mediocrity we could only get from Sam. Or perhaps a Peugeot engine.’

‘We are delighted with the soul-crushing dismalness we have achieved and that’s why it’s the right time for Sam to leave his role as sporking director,’ explained another high ranking source. ‘Of course, we are aware of what happened at Williams after Sam left. They became quite good. But hopefully our new Honda engine won’t work properly and we’ll be able to maintain this level of depressingly poor performance in his absence.’

‘We are sorry to see Sam Michael leave his role as spurting director,’ said an official McLaren statement. ‘In particular, team personnel will miss their regular games of trying to guess what the fuck he actually does around here’.