McLaren’s team principal, Andrea Stella, believes they can be competitive, provided they maintain their strong development rate.
Coming into 2024, McLaren will be aiming to build on the promising progress it made last season.
After arriving in Bahrain for pre-season testing with arguably one of the weakest packages on the grid, the Woking-based squad produced an impressive mid-season turnaround. By Silverstone, McLaren were podium scorers on home turf—and the trend continued for the remainder of the season, with Lando Norris recording seven podium finishes (six of these were P2s). Rookie Oscar Piastri also made waves, scoring two podiums of his own (four, if you count the sprints), and a sensational sprint race victory in Qatar.
Speaking in a virtual media session, Stella clarified that any improvements that didn’t make it onto the launch spec MCL38 due to time constraints, are expected to ship as upgrade packages early on into the season.
“These areas, rather than being specific, I would keep it relatively general, but they effectively have to do with improving the aerodynamic performance, improving the mechanical side and the interaction with tyres,” said Stella.
“So in all these three key areas, there are a few projects that we had started, we saw that they had potential, but just we couldn’t finalise them in time to have it on the launch car, so they will very likely become updates for the early part of the season.”
While Stella believes Red Bull will continue to be the favourites heading into the season, there is clear optimism in the McLaren camp regarding their chances of challenging the top teams in 2024.
“I’ll take it to start. So I think at the start of the season, my expectation is that Red Bull will keep enjoying some advantage,” said Stella.
“I say this because they didn’t develop the car very much last year, and I would think it’s reasonable to expect that they will have accumulated, let’s say, some knowledge and development last year that will be capitalised onto the 2024 car. That’s my expectation.
“Saying that, looking at ourselves, looking at McLaren, if, and I say if, we keep the development rate that we have had in 2023, that we will have hopefully add to the 2024 car—if we can keep this development rate, then I think we can be in a strong position,” he continued.
“Whether that’s enough to challenge Red Bull and the other top teams that certainly will have made good improvements, we will find out. But we think that this is a strong development rate.
“But like I said, it’s now up to us to try and consolidate over time.”
Norris added that he believes Red Bull are beatable, but underlined the importance of remaining consistent.
“Not a lot to add, to be honest. I think it was pretty much covered. I mean, if you were to say, are they beatable, you’re going to have to say yes
“I think we’re going to want to believe to say yes, because we were very close at certain times. And at certain times, we did beat them.
“So the question is, can we beat them over a season? Because I think that’s going to be the challenging thing, and I think that’s going to be very difficult to do with how well they’re performing.
“So yeah, optimistic. Possible to beat them at certain times? I want to believe so, yeah.”
Piastri also chimed in, saying, “Yeah, more of the same, really. I think you have to have the optimism that we can beat them. Like Lando said, we got very close at certain times, with some success in certain sessions.
“So yeah, I think like Andrea was saying, if we can keep the same rate of development, then I think we can be very optimistic.”
The Australian pointed out that McLaren will need to keep an eye on the likes of Ferrari and Mercedes, who have all the ingredients to mount a challenge of their own.
“I think we also have to be aware that it’s not just Red Bull we’re fighting as well. We were in a very intense battle with Mercedes and Ferrari, especially in the second half of the year in terms of championship points in the second half of the season. It was incredibly close between us.
“We’re all teams that have had a lot of success at various stages. So I think we have to be aware it’s not just Red Bull that we’re fighting. And I think there’ll be other top teams that are making progress as well.”
