With Red Bull being the runaway championship winner in the Constructor’s championship, the fight was always going to be for being the second-best team on the grid. As Mercedes hold on to the spot for now, Ferrari has been hard at work to try and chase Mercedes and retain their finish from 2022. However, the Prancing Horse might need to shift focus from the Silver Arrows as McLaren is hot on their tail, with Oscar Piastri claiming his team is aiming for a top-three finish in 2023.
Ferrari (P3) is currently 79 points ahead of McLaren (P5) in the championships. With five races left to go in the season, there are plenty of points up for grabs for the Woking-based team to cause a major upset before the season goes into the history books. Aston Martin (P4) is McLaren’s first hurdle in the climb to P3, but an eleven-point deficit might not prove to be too much trouble given the kind of form McLaren is in. While 79 points might be too big a deficit to cut down in five races, there is no harm in trying to go for it, especially with McLaren becoming the second-fastest team on the grid.
Apart from the 79-point deficit, there is another point of concern for McLaren in their bid to secure P3 in 2023. Mercedes Engineer Andrew Shovlin believes his team has a decent chance of securing a podium finish in Austin. Should this happen, the road will get tougher for McLaren as there will be fewer points on offer for them to secure.
Oscar Piastri aims to take down Ferrari before the 2023 season ends
The final two races of the Asian Leg of the F1 calendar gave McLaren promising results as they look to become a team worthy of challenging Red Bull for the title. Both McLaren drivers locked out two-thirds of the podium in Japan and Qatar as McLaren has now become the second-fastest team. As such, SpeedCafe quotes Piastri as being confident in taking the fight to Ferrari and making the ‘hunter’ (for P2) become the ‘hunted.’
“I think there are going to be some races (coming up) that are going to be more difficult than Qatar, and probably will suit other teams a bit better. Seventy-nine points in five races and a couple of sprints is a big challenge but we’ll give it a go.”
As McLaren continues its incredible rise, a Sprint session win by Piastri in Qatar further asserted their status as one of the fastest teams on the grid. However, the Woking-based team would be hoping to secure a feature race win before the season ends to boost their morale even more and stamp their authority as valid challengers for the constructor’s title against Red Bull Racing.
A revamped McLaren on a meteoric rise in F1
In March 2023, McLaren announced the departure of the team’s technical director as part of a major reshuffling of the team’s engineering setup. Soon after, they brought in former Red Bull engineering chief Rob Marshall to take up the spot. Former Indy 500 winner Gil de Ferran also made his entry into the team as a non-executive advisor. The final key to the lock came in the form of former Head of Concept for Ferrari, David Sanchez.
With a revamped management trio, McLaren started working on a state-of-the-art wind tunnel, which further boosted their car’s performance. To add to the mix, the driver duo of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri proved to be the perfect addition to McLaren’s winning formula. With everything working in perfect harmony at the moment, all that remains is to see where McLaren will finish the season in the constructor’s championship as they hope to dethrone Red Bull in 2024.
