Norris yet to notice new leadership: 'That's not how it works'
F1 News
McLaren has moved from a single technical director to a technical team. Lando Norris does not yet feel that much has changed within the team, although he does see a different mindset emerging.
Changes at McLaren
At the end of March, McLaren announced it was parting ways with technical director James Key. Performance was disappointing and the British team felt a new organisational structure was needed to become successful. The technical team of three now consists of Peter Prodromou (aerodynamics), David Sanchez (car concept and performance from 2024) and Neil Houldey (engineering and design). It was also announced on Wednesday that Gil de Ferran has been brought to McLaren as an advisor.
''No, I don't think it doesn't work exactly like that,'' Norris said at the press conference in Miami when asked if he noticed any changes within the Woking-based team yet. ''I think say like the new floor we have now is more of a different philosophy, a different understanding of how things work. I guess that was kind of found during the winter already, just a little bit too late.''
Those new updates are still from the old team's mind, as the new organisation has only been in place since March. Indeed, the man in charge of the car concept and performance, Sanchez, does not join until 2024 due to his gardening leave at Ferrari.
Norris sees progress
''The rest is not as simple as that. It's not just one big thing. There are people who come up with different ideas and different ways of doing things. It's also the efficiency of work, especially with the budget cap now and time with CFD and wind tunnel. It's about the efficiency and how you work through things and coming up with the ideas from that side of it and working from there and just helping people work together at the same time, just the teamwork and team ethic of it all. It's not like we don't have the correct people.I think we've got a lot of clever people and I think a lot of people that can help us move forward. It's just how people work together and just the structure of it all, I think, makes a bigger difference than a lot of people kind of think from the outside,'' the Brit concludes.
For now, the season has been a difficult one for McLaren. Due to the huge mountain of points accumulated in Australia (mainly due to competitor crashes), McLaren is still fifth in the constructors' standings, but in the other race weekends only one point was scored, namely a ninth-place finish by Norris in Azerbaijan. So updates are badly needed to score even more points.