McLaren CEO Zak Brown on Lando Norris’ criticism and the turnaround the McLaren team has made during the 2023 season
McLaren CEO Zak Brown says Lando Norris’ public criticism of his 2023 Formula One car only served to motivate the team as it embarked on a programme to improve performance. McLaren had initially missed its targets for the 2023 season with a car that had too much drag, leading to significant changes within the organisation under the leadership of new team principal Andrea Stella.
The first fruits of Stella’s revised technical structure were put on track in the final races before the summer break, earning Norris two podium finishes while his rookie teammate Oscar Piastri finished second in Saturday’s Belgian Grand Prix sprint.
But while Norris had been outspoken about the MCL60’s shortcomings prior to the introduction of B-spec, and even afterwards stated that the car was “pretty awful” to drive in slow corners, Brown rejects claims that his driver’s comments have been demotivating for the Woking squad.
“No, we’re all motivated,” Brown says in an interview with Autosport “We’re happy together, we’re grumpy together. So when he makes a comment, it’s consistent and motivating.”
“We don’t let it get us down, we fight hard. If you look at how bad the season started, it was tough. Under the surface, we knew we had great development in the wind tunnel.”
“So it was like we took a beating in public at the beginning of the year, while we knew that under the surface it was actually going quite well. And the team handled it very well. So we’re motivated.”
McLaren’s slump at the start of 2023, in which the team finished only sporadically in the top 10 and scored points in just three of the first eight races, was still a far cry from its nadir in 2017, when it struggled with uncompetitive Honda power units.
Brown realised during the 2022 season that something had to change to prevent the team from stagnating in midfield. However, by then it was too late to right the ship before the start of the 2023 season, with McLaren admitting at the season opener that it was behind the curve where it should be.
“It never got that far. 2017 was here [pointing to the ground] and 2021 was about there [somewhere in the middle],” Brown added. “We never got back down there. We just hit a bump in the road and I felt that last year.”
“Those are things I realised in the second half of last year. I had some conversations internally about why we’re losing momentum, we’re stagnating, which in Formula One means we’re regressing.”
“There would have been no point in hyping up the launch if we knew what we were going to see 30 days later, so we were just transparent because our data showed we weren’t where we needed to be.”
“We knew changes were in the works and then the data told us things would get better in Austria and Silverstone and they did. That gave us a lot of confidence that what we see in the data correlates with the track, whether it’s good data or bad data. “
McLaren’s resurgence has propelled the team to a comfortable fifth place in the Constructors’ Championship table ahead of the second half of the season, having challenged Ferrari, Mercedes and Aston Martin over the past four race weekends.
The team is now focusing on developing a low drag wing package to be more competitive at Monza after struggling for top speed at Spa.