Photo credit: McLaren Racing
In the 2022 season, McLaren fought to the end against Alpine for fourth place in the constructors’ championship but lost out.
Going into the 2023 season, the Woking outfit were leaving a lot to be desired as the MCL60 was extremely slow, and it wasn’t until the Austrian Grand Prix that they began to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and to cap it all off, at both Silverstone and Hungary, Lando Norris finished second, scoring more points in those two races than he had managed all season before then.
The good results did not come exclusively from Norris, but also his team-mate, Oscar Piastri also achieved outstanding results, making it clear that the team had given its drivers a superior car to the start of the season.
This improvement not only scored points, but also reassured the Bristol native, who had been the subject of speculation that he would move to another team due to the under-performance of the ‘Papaya’ despite having a contract until 2025.
The 23-year-old admitted that the MCL60’s progress was a huge relief, and that just half that progress would have been considered a positive step, but that the turnaround was far greater than they had expected: “I guess there’s always a bit of relief, just going from any difficult situation to having such a big change around. Even if we took half the step we did take, I think we still would have seen that as a positive sign. But the step was even bigger than we were expecting. So, of course, it’s a relief, but not just for myself, I think for the whole team.”
Commenting on this, the British driver also mentioned the reason for the delay in the improvements: “We kind of took quite a big step back over the winter to reassess everything that we’re doing, and the route we’re taking and that’s why we were quite delayed with putting the upgrades that we’ve had in place and onto the car. But we took our time and we had to stay patient.”
Despite this, the driver of car number 4 on the grid accepted that there are sometimes difficult times and that he would have liked to have had a better car, however, he reaffirmed his commitment to McLaren and the confidence he has in the team: “There are frustrating times and just difficult times, but at no point did I think: ‘This is not where I want to be.
“Of course, there are times when I wished we had a more competitive car and I wished that we could have started the year in a smoother way. It doesn’t give you a lot of hope in beginning of the year when you struggle as much as what we did.
“But I’m still always very happy to be with the team that I’m with, I still have a lot of faith that McLaren are able to achieve their goals and at the same time achieve my goals, which is to win races and to win championships with them.
“And when you have upgrades and situations like this, then of course there’s relief. These are very positive signs that we can jump ahead of Aston, jump ahead of Ferrari, fight against Mercedes and not be far off a Red Bull from one upgrade.”
