McLaren know the three top teams are out of reach: "Are realistic"
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- GPblog.com
McLaren know that with the MCL60, they cannot structurally compete for wins in Formula 1. CEO Zak Brown and team boss Andrea Stella would of course have preferred that, but the reality is different. The British formation's main goal is to regain fourth place among constructors from Alpine and close the gap towards the top teams so that more is possible in 2024.
Getting better is the goal in 2023
"Our main goal is to keep improving, day by day," Stella told GPblog and others. Andreas Seidl's replacement as team boss knows that Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari are out of reach. "Realistically, we know with the top three teams at the moment, this could mean that you actually compete for the 4th place, and we would like to be in this position over the course of the season. We are realistic about the short term, there's been really good work on the car over the winter, we know that some areas of the car can be further developed and we have these developments in the pipeline and they will come hopefully soon in season."
Those updates in particular should make the MCL60 a lot more competitive, the 51-year-old Italian already knows. "This should allow us to take some step forward from a competitiveness point of view and achieve this goal of being a top-four team." Looking very far forward, then, McLaren does not, but looking backwards is also important. Teams like Alfa Romeo and Aston Martin want nothing more than to attack the top-five, as do Haas F1 and AlphaTauri.
McLaren are realistic
Brown agrees with Stella's words and preaches realism. "I wouldn't want to predict regular podiums because you don't know how strong the other teams are going to be and, and they've got great driver lineups." In any case, the US boss is very happy with his driver duo Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. He thinks that with this driver duo, McLaren can aim high in some Grands Prix at the moment when front-end drivers are lost due to crashes or poor reliability.
The 2023 car is a further development on the 2022 car. "Last year was a difficult year. We had our issue around getting two cars competitive. I think we had some deficiencies in the car, which we now better understand and have worked through. So I'd like to think this year will be more competitive than last year," Brown continued.
New wind tunnel
This year sees the completion of McLaren's new wind tunnel. It should give the Woking-based formation an advantage over previous seasons. "I think once we're able to get that technology in place that's going to allow us to where we had some financial inefficiencies, you can imagine when you're renting a wind tunnel, you're paying more for your wind tunnel then if you own it. And so that's a small example of, economics that we can then redistribute somewhere else within the racing team." In any case, the preconditions in terms of technology are all in place to grow into a top team in the pinnacle of motorsport in the coming years. "Very excited that over the next couple of years, I feel we'll have everything in place to be fighting at the front. Of course we have to execute, but there isn't anything on the road map that I feel is missing come 24 months from now", the CEO concludes.