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Laurence Edmondson, F1 Editor
Lando Norris may have missed out on this year’s drivers’ title, but his McLaren team enters the final two races of the Formula 1 season on the brink of its first constructors’ championship in 26 years. In an increasingly close battle with Ferrari, McLaren leads the Italian team by 24 points with two races remaining and a maximum of 103 points up for grabs for either side.
If McLaren can close out the championship over the next two weekends in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, it will represent its biggest triumph since Lewis Hamilton won his first drivers’ title with the team in 2008.
The story of how McLaren went from the lower midfield to the front of the grid is a remarkable one that has not only transformed the team’s fortunes but also revitalised F1. Along with the recent resurgence of Ferrari and Mercedes, McLaren’s progress has brought an end to Red Bull’s domination, while providing inspiration to the rest of the grid that big gains are possible in a relatively short period of time.
Laying the groundwork
At the start of the 2023 season, it seemed inconceivable that any team, least of all McLaren, would challenge Red Bull for titles before the next major regulation change in 2026. After struggling in preseason testing, Norris and teammate Oscar Piastri failed to score points at the opening two races of 2023 as the car emerged well off the pace of Red Bull, Aston Martin, Ferrari and Mercedes.
Plans had already been in place for an overhaul of the technical department, and they were implemented ahead of the third round in Australia. James Key was removed from his role as technical director and replaced by three heads of departments in a new structure aimed at providing “clarity and effectiveness” to a seemingly lost Woking design office.
The broad changes were the vision of Andrea Stella, who took over the role of team principal from Andreas Seidl at the end of the 2022 season and is considered by many to be the driving force behind the team’s turnaround. A talented engineer who worked directly with Fernando Alonso during his time at Ferrari and followed the two-time champion to McLaren in 2015, Stella is a mild-mannered but inspirational figure within the team.
“Andrea is leading by example — his thoughtfulness, his communication, his transparency,” McLaren CEO Zak Brown said earlier this year. “He’s not political. He’s a team player. No one works harder than Andrea. He listens to people, he listens to their perspectives. He takes everything on board.
“He communicates his direction and decisions very well. He’s not interested in anything other than performance, so he doesn’t get distracted by a lot of the other activities that maybe some of the other team bosses do. He just wants to go racing.”
Stella was aware of the need to strengthen his team when he took control, and early in 2023 McLaren announced it had poached big-name engineers from its rivals, with Rob Marshall joining from Red Bull and David Sanchez from Ferrari. As the new chief designer, Marshall has been at the centre of the team’s progress, although Sanchez only lasted a few months once he realised the reality of the job on offer was not in line with his expectations.
At the time, Stella said Sanchez was “too senior” for the role offered to him, adding that team and engineer came to an amicable agreement to part ways, with Sanchez then moving to Alpine later in 2024.
With Marshall slotting in as chief designer, long-serving McLaren engineer Neil Houldey was given the role of technical director of engineering while Peter Prodromou, who joined McLaren from Red Bull in 2014, continued in his role as technical director of aerodynamics. The bolstered technical team also had a new wind tunnel to play with, which came online in late 2023 and undoubtedly contributed to the steps in performance the team needed to catch Red Bull.
The first product of the revised technical structure (pre wind tunnel) was a major upgrade in time for the 2023 Austrian Grand Prix, which instantly vaulted the team up the grid. Although Red Bull remained untouchable throughout the rest of the 2023 season — with the exception of Carlos Sainz‘s anomalous victory at the Singapore Grand Prix — the Austria upgrade provided McLaren with a fruitful development direction on which its 2024 success was based.
An ‘unthinkable’ achievement
While the start of the 2024 season was nowhere near as bad as 2023, it still looked like a near-impossible task to prise either title from the grip of Red Bull. At the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, Max Verstappen won the race with a margin of 22 seconds over teammate Sergio Pérez and a 48-second advantage over the highest-placed McLaren of Norris in sixth. A week later in Saudi Arabia it was still a comfortable 13 seconds over Pérez for Verstappen and 32 seconds over Piastri in fourth.
The reigning champion racked up four wins from the first five races, a reliability issue opening the door for Carlos Sainz to win in Australia and preventing a clean sweep for Verstappen. At that point of the season, McLaren was third in the standings — 55 points behind Ferrari and 99 points off Red Bull — but what came next revolutionised its campaign.
In Miami, the team introduced a raft of updates, including a completely revised front wing geometry and an all-new floor. Combined with new front suspension geometry and brake ducts to help direct the airflow from the front wing and changes to the upper bodywork to suit the new floor, the car unlocked a significant amount of performance, allowing Norris to take the first victory of his F1 career that same weekend.
Suddenly, McLaren was in contention for race wins, putting Verstappen and Red Bull under the kind of pressure they had not felt since their 2021 title battle with Hamilton and Mercedes. The reigning champions hit back with their own upgrade in Imola, but while Verstappen won the race, it was clear Red Bull had lost ground relative to McLaren in the development race, and in doing so exposed some weaknesses with its car concept.
The consistency of Norris’ ensuing strong results saw him force his way into title contention with Verstappen, a championship that was finally conceded on Saturday night in Las Vegas. It’s in the constructors’ standings, though, where McLaren’s turnaround shines brightest.
Since the Miami Grand Prix, the Woking-based team has outscored Red Bull by 152 points, largely due to Pérez’s struggles in the second RB20, while Norris has scored 282 points to Verstappen’s 293. Considering where the team was at the start of the season, both are seen as significant achievements by Stella.
“If we remove the first few races of the season before we deliver the Miami upgrades, then we see that we have a trajectory from a driver’s championship point of view that means that Lando could compete with Max,” Stella said last weekend when reflecting on this year’s championship. “This is one of the unthinkable achievements that we have to positively acknowledge at McLaren, and when I say unthinkable, unthinkable thinking of where we were only 18 months ago.”
Does McLaren have the best car in F1?
McLaren’s strong performances since Miami have led many to suggest it has a better car than any other team in F1. This is an accolade many drivers often bristle against as it suggests they should be winning all the time and puts the focus on them as individuals when they are not.
Norris is no different, and while he has praised his team for the work they have achieved this year, he often points out that either the Ferrari, Red Bull or Mercedes is quicker in certain circumstances. Speaking in Las Veags, Stella agreed that McLaren only has the fastest car at certain track layouts, and reiterated that his team’s consistency and constant improvement has often gone undervalued.
“For me, once we talk about reviewing opportunities, at the same time I would like to review that since we delivered lap time to the car in Miami, McLaren has outscored by far every other competitor,” Stella said. “So I think that while we have opportunities, the amount of points that we have scored — not necessarily because we have had the best car like I keep repeating, because we had the best car at a few events, not all — it’s just because the team and the drivers operated at very high standards.
“We take these high standards as a positive, as the foundation to keep building. And to keep building, definitely, you need to look at what you haven’t done perfectly. But this is what we do all the time. This is where our culture works very well and hopefully, there won’t be many opportunities left in the final part of the season. But at the moment, we are extremely happy with what we have been able to achieve and with the standards that we have been operating throughout the season.”
One obvious weakness was laid bare in Las Vegas, where both Norris and Piastri struggled to protect the front tyres from graining. Brought about by understeer in low-speed corners, Norris said it had been a trait of the McLaren for “six years” and was particularly apparent in the cool conditions last weekend.
“I think there’s some McLaren characteristics that we have improved over time,” Stella said. “Definitely we have been able to deliver a competitive car that can win races, but can win races in a certain kind of circuit. And some of these inherent limitations, especially with the behaviour of the front end, still sometimes pop out when track layout or grip level or downforce level mean that you need to get a certain response from the front end and at the moment this response from the front end we are not able to offer to our drivers.”
Can McLaren close out the constructors’ title?
The high-speed corners and relatively high temperatures in Qatar should mean there is no such repeat at Sunday’s penultimate race of the season. The Lusail Circuit should suit McLaren’s strengths and allow the team to maximise its result ahead of the final round the following weekend in Abu Dhabi.
To be crowned champions in Qatar, McLaren must outscore Ferrari by 21 points (and not be outscored by Red Bull by eight points), and while such a points difference is possible at a sprint weekend where a maximum of 59 points are on offer, Ferrari’s form at three of the past four races has outstripped McLaren’s. Stella is wary of getting complacent ahead of the final two races and expects the title battle to go down to the wire.
“It’s true and I’ve said myself that Qatar and Abu Dhabi should be a territory that is more suitable for the way we have designed our car,” he said. “But at the same time, I think we need to be careful that the level of the top teams in Formula 1 in 2024, in my view, is unprecedented. I really can’t remember a season in Formula 1 where four teams were operating at such a high level. Not only because they are in condition to win, but they are in condition to dominate like Mercedes did [in Las Vegas] with faultless weekends.
“This means for the team, that yes, we go to Qatar thinking that the car may perform well, but if we think that this is an easy ride, we will be hit by the reality. So we go there knowing that we need to maximise the potential of the car. If we do that, then certainly from a track layout point of view, the car should spend quite a lot of time where it’s been designed to perform.
“But I can’t, to be honest, I can’t not recognise that I would expect Ferrari, certainly even Red Bull, Mercedes, I think they will have got quite a lot of information from this weekend as well to be in condition to win in Qatar. So it’s a very interesting — much more than I would have liked — final part of the season. I always try to get things to be boring, but that’s not the case.”
Source: www.espn.com