Why McLaren driver Lando Norris doesn’t expect his team to catch up with Red Bull and Max Verstappen before the 2023 Formula One season
According to Lando Norris, McLaren needs to improve in two areas to take the next step in Formula One: slow corners and car efficiency. “If we manage to do that, then we will always be fighting for front positions everywhere,” Norris says ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort.
Why is the McLaren driver so optimistic? Because his team has already improved tremendously in the 2023 season. “So now, if we can make similar progress in slow corners and efficiency as we have in high speeds and medium speed corners, that should give us half a second to six tenths,” he explains.
There’s just one catch: implementing this on an existing car, and during the racing season at that, is “one of the hardest things you can do”.
Next McLaren jump probably not 2023
That’s why Norris expects “more likely 2024” to be McLaren’s next major leap, especially as his team is still busy “digesting” the recent updates.As the England-based racer puts it, “We’re probably living off the lessons learned from the update in Austria from now until the end of the season.”
“I guess we’re more likely not to get to the level we’re aiming for this year. I guess we’ll have to look at that for 2024.”
By then McLaren boss Zak Brown wants to have taken all the measures on the technical side to get McLaren back on the winning track. Here Norris “totally agrees”, but with caveats, as he points out.
Why Norris agrees with Brown, but not entirely …
“I think there’s a difference between having the prerequisites and having the successes. When Zak says it like that, he means: we’re getting new people into the team, coming from Red Bull and from Ferrari. By January, the wind tunnel should also be fully ready, just like the simulator.”
“But it still takes a bit of time from January onwards to get everything out of what we have,” says Norris. “So yes, I think he’s right, but we can’t put it into lap time immediately for the start of the 2024 season, but maybe more like the end of 2024 or probably not until 2025.”
And the big question is whether McLaren will manage to pose a serious threat to Red Bull in this way by the time new Formula One rules are already introduced in 2026. “You should never say never. And I don’t want to say no either,” Norris comments.
McLaren back to new normal form at Zandvoort?
“Considering where we were [at the start] of the season and the progress we’ve made, we’ve made quite a big jump in a short space of time. From that point of view, it should be possible.” Everything else, he said, only time will tell.
For now, Red Bull has “done a good job and everyone else just hasn’t,” Norris says. His McLaren team also still has work to do, as the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa showed. However, he says Spa was “kind of an outlier” for his team “because we put a lot of effort into being good on 90 per cent of the tracks and not the ten per cent that includes Spa and Monza. “
Zandvoort, where the first Formula One race after the summer break will be held this weekend, again falls into the category of tracks where the McLaren MCL60 is much better, he said. “So I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t build on the form we had before Spa,” Norris said.
Win chance for McLaren against Red Bull? Only with “luck”!
And maybe at Zandvoort or at one of the other races there will be a really big chance for McLaren not only to be second behind Red Bull, but to win. “But we would need a bit of luck or something would have to happen with Max [Verstappen] in terms of reliability,” Norris says.
“At the moment I don’t have enough confidence to say we can be a threat to him on our own. Maybe we’ll finish ahead of him in qualifying. We’ve been close before. There are also a few tracks coming up where we might be close again or just ahead if we get everything right. But maybe not.”
“In the race, Red Bull is on a different level either way because the tyre wear is practically zero compared to everyone else in the field, even compared to Mercedes. We are miles away there. We are not in a good enough position in race trim and we still have to make big progress here. “
The new motivation at McLaren since Austria
“But if things go wrong [for Verstappen], then we might be able to capitalise on that kind of mishap in some races,” says Norris, currently eighth in the 2023 drivers’ championship.
This new confidence at McLaren is thanks to the “greatest progress on our part”, Norris continues. “I really think the way we’ve turned our season around is something you haven’t seen in Formula One on this scale for many years, especially under a set of regulations that a lot of people say you can’t do anything about.”
“This has given us a lot of hope and motivation. It shows: We can do it if we just understand [the rules]. And we understand the rules better and better. We are proving that with our car. And you have to get used to this new reality. “