Last year, Lando Norris and the team had a rough start before putting on one of the biggest mid-season turnarounds. While at one point they were only ahead of AlphaTauri (now RB) at the Miami GP, in the last few races they were able to narrow the gap with Red Bull. The British driver, however, asserts that they no longer have the advantage of being the second fastest. While stating so, the McLaren star also revealed the name of the team he believes will have that competitive edge.
Speaking at the Bahrain GP presser, Norris admitted that while for McLaren the 2024 pre-season testing proved to be successful, the team is still unclear of its position in the pecking order. He said, “I think we have a rough idea where we are at but we don’t know where we are compared to other teams.”
The #4 driver did, however, acknowledge that his squad will be behind the top two teams “in a bunch.” He said, “We think there is a clear top two and then a bunch of us.” In Bahrain testing, McLaren did fairly well, though the MCL38 most likely lacked the raw pace they would have expected.
Their competitors, meantime, have advanced to a greater extent. The most notable example is Ferrari, whose SF-24 performed admirably in Bahrain. After three days of testing, the Scuderia was the fastest team overall as per the laptimes.
With this in mind, Norris currently feels that Ferrari is Red Bull’s closest rival, who may have the inherent overall advantage. However, for Norris’ apparent pessimism, another reason is that McLaren is continuing down the same development route as they did in 2023. Thus, it is clear that the McLaren drivers’ statements are not unfounded and are based on some actual information.
Will Lando Norris be doomed to play the catchup like last year?
Zak Brown stated at the start of the previous season that McLaren had failed to meet their development goals for the MCL60. As a result, the team at the beginning could only fight in the midfield, which often kept them away from the regular podium contention. In many cases, they even failed to finish in the points, which made the situation even worse.
However, it appeared that the difficult times were past them after their floor updates in Austria, which made the team the second fastest on the track. Nevertheless, as per the recent reports, the Woking-based team might face the same challenges they faced at the beginning of the previous season.
McLaren’s team principal, Andrea Stella, disclosed that the team’s MCL38 lacked multiple upgrades. This came out because the engineering team failed to put out the updates. Now this can put the squad at a disadvantage since the season is quickly approaching.
In light of this, Craig Scarborough even expressed anguish with McLaren’s engineers during an online discussion with Peter Windsor. He said, “It’ll have to be now part of an in-season development. And when you kind of had the kind of two up, it’s like what were they doing over the winter?”
Previously, after the 2023 Austrian GP upgrades, Norris, and Piastri’s outstanding performance had drawn attention. Their respective performances placed them in the running for a podium spot regularly. However, despite that rise, they couldn’t help the team finish in the top three.
As the season came to an end, the team had to settle for a P4 only because of their early season downturn. Hence, as things stand, it appears that Norris and the team will have to get off to another slow start.
