“We had our challenges in 2020 financially”– McLaren admits they won’t be challenging for title until 2024

Tanish Chachra | 14/01/2022
"We had our challenges in 2020 financially"– McLaren admits they won't be challenging for title until 2024

One of the most historical F1 teams- McLaren, claims that they won’t be able to challenge for the title until 2024, courtesy of the technical deficit.

McLaren, one of the most successful teams in the history of Formula 1, had a tough time in the middle of the last season. Though from 2019, they had an impressive resurgence against their opposition.

Despite the financial obstacles in 2020, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, they managed to have a great performative year. Finishing, P3, they claimed the title of the best of the rest (behind Mercedes and Red Bull).

In 2021, they weren’t bad either and finished P4 in the constructors’ standings after a season-long battle against Ferrari. Now, aiming for progress, McLaren boss Zak Brown claims that his team won’t be challenging for the title until 2024.

“I’m delighted with our people which is what is first and foremost important,” said Brown in an end-of-season media call. “As everyone knows.”

“We had our challenges [in 2020] financially and those have all been resolved and now we are deploying our maximum resources to catch up on the technical infrastructure under the budget cap.”

“The wind tunnel is under heavy construction as we speak. We’ve lots of investment so we’re financially very healthy so that is all behind us,” he added.

“Then, on track, we just want to continue each year until we have our infrastructure in place which, unfortunately, really won’t be until the ’24 season.”

“It won’t be complete for another 18 months and of course, that is when you start developing the ’24 car and we will make the best with what we have, but it certainly won’t be until ’24 that we can say we have got everything we need.”

Also read: McLaren team principal reveals how the team were on brink of filing for Bankruptcy

McLaren proud of 2021 despite missing P3

For long into the season, it felt McLaren would finish above Ferrari. But a consistent series of performances by Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc put the Maranello based team above McLaren. However, Brown is still happy with what the team achieved last year.

“We wanted to close the gap to the front, and we have done that. We scored more points per race than we did [in 2020], we had more podiums than we did, we got our great one-two at Monza and our pole in Russia.

“Unfortunately, we’ve slipped to fourth. I think that’s just the nature of how the sport is. Pit stops are much, much improved, so everything we set out at the beginning of the season to continue to get towards the front.”

“We hit every single one of those targets that were set out other than the constructors’ championship. We need to look back on the year and see it as a very successful year, and continue to build on our journey to get back to hopefully fighting for the world championship in a few years.”

Also read: McLaren boss claims Daniel Ricciardo in team boosted Lando Norris’ confidence

Post Edited By: Tanish Chachra
McLaren Zak Brown

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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