Twelve months is a long time in motorsport, as the once powerhouse McLaren team who mired through the bulk of the 2010s and came to the Australian Grand Prix in 2023 with zero points – are leaving it this time sitting third in the championship.
Achieving their first podium in Melbourne since the 2014 double podium of Kevin Magnussen and Jenson Button, Lando Norris led Aussie teammate Oscar Piastri to a sensational third at Albert Park – finishing behind a Ferrari one-two.
The multiple World Constructors’ Champions successfully turned around their fortunes from 2023, where they started off the season unable to get both cars out of Q1, to being the second-fastest team behind the Red Bull juggernauts.
The expectation for this once-mighty team through the decades, at last, is that which mirrors its prestige.
Oscar Piastri. (Photo by Qian Jun/MB Media/Getty Images)
Though coming into 2024, the challenge is fierce – particularly from Ferrari who had Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc ahead of Norris at the chequered flag in Australia. They also capitalised on a rare reliability problem for reigning world champion Max Verstappen.
Speaking in the Team Principal’s press conference on Friday, McLaren CEO Zak Brown reflected on his team’s growth – particularly under the leadership of Andrea Stella who took the team boss reigns ahead of last year from Audi-bound Andreas Seidl.
Strengthened too by the appointments of the highly rated Rob Marshall and Dave Sanchez to their technical department at the start of this season.
“We’re still a pretty young team as far as the current team [is concerned],” said Brown, whose own contract as CEO was renewed till the end of 2030. That news was also announced ahead of the Australian Grand Prix.
“I feel like we’ve kind of picked up where we left off the second half of last year. The field has never been closer, so we need to continue to push hard, but I think we’ve designed and developed a very strong racing car that will hopefully get stronger, but we know the other nine teams are not sitting still.”
Eluding too, of course, the fact that Ferrari has been able to transition back into the second-best team behind Red Bull during the off-season. Though pertinent it is to credit McLaren for the confidence with which they’re able to apply themselves race-to-race.
With new key infrastructure and development tools at their disposal, it is warming to see a team holding themselves accountable in this cost cap era – where others have been critical of the restriction on spending in that they cannot catch Red Bull with those limits imposed.
While McLaren is yet to win a race in this ground-effect era of technical regulations, the foundations are there for success particularly with their driver combination also locked into long-term deals and constantly improving.
Speaking about Piastri’s growth into his sophomore season, Brown told The Roar during the Australian Grand Prix that, “he’s already a mature young man, but you can definitely see a year on he’s got a higher level of confidence because he knows what to expect.”
Although Norris’ fourteenth career podium in Melbourne has earned him the unenviable statistic as the driver with the most top-three finishes in Formula One without a win – that elusive victory shouldn’t be too far away.
McLaren ultimately proved to be an example of genuine progress, during the cost cap era after another podium in 2024.
Though ultimately the real caveat will be when either Norris or Piastri win their maiden grand prix.
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