Forgive this outburst of apparent patriotism, but when the best of British in Formula One terms fails so gloomily, the effect is universal where spectacle is paramount.
The misery that is McLaren, and inevitably their main driver Jenson Button, too, through no fault of his own, is one of the ongoing puzzles of this grand prix season.
When the team’s hierarchy return to HQ and mirror their efforts in the 2013 campaign, the reflections will be disappointingly distorted.
And unless there is a magical transformation, which is extremely doubtful, they will decamp from this weekend’s final fling in Brazil overshadowed by abject failure in their most disastrous season for 33 years.
It will be the first time they have not tasted triumph since 2006 — and they have not even looked like finishing in the top three, never mind climbing onto the top step of the podium as champions Red Bull and Ferrari and even pre-season-no-hopers Lotus have left them well adrift in their wake.
Leaving Interlagos after Sunday’s clash without silverware will be the first time since 1980 they have not reaped a top-three reward.
Their slide to relative anonymity from front-runners to also-rans is one of Formula One’s most dispiriting situations.
It has been a troubled and yawn-filled season for a team so used to success it is as if it has plummeted headlong into a mess of disorganisation and clumsily inept planning.
That’s no fault of Button, who will knock up a record-busting 247th grand prix in Brazil.
The 33-year-old has been forced to compensate with patience, skill and outright bravery for his car’s lack of pace and poise and, tribute to him, he has kept his cool in a masterpiece of loyalty to a team that has let him down so crucially.
Almost every race weekend mild-mannered Button, the 2009 champion with 15 career wins to his name, could have been forgiven for blowing his top at the pathetic inadequacy of both the team and the struggling MP4-28 no-hoper car.
His best placing was a fifth in China in the third race of a season that had promised so much. Qualifying, too, has been a constant embarrassment where his driving brilliance has been unable to stir the car into world-beating action.
I can think of at least half-a-dozen drivers of lesser ability who would have exploded with rage at having to go to work among 320-plus km/h thoroughbreds on a veritable donkey.
Even team boss Martin Whitmarsh, a gentle soul in contrast to the scarily rigorous and demanding Ron Dennis, his predecessor, admits: “We made some decisions last year in developing a car that had too much risk in them — and they didn’t work.
“There is a whole variety of things that went wrong.”
It could be, and I fear it is, that Whitmarsh has not been the tough task-master a team of Mclaren’s quality and vast reputation demands — and thrives upon.
Unlike the awesome days of dead-eyed Dennis.