McLaren is confident it took a step forward with its upgraded car at the Austrian Grand Prix, but the true scale of its progress won’t become clear until after this weekend’s race in Silverstone.
The historic British team started the year badly undercooked, having realised late in 2022 that the car it was designing for this year’s campaign was going to miss key development targets.
Simultaneously CEO Zak Brown had become displeased with his team’s stalled progress, and during the off-season an inquest was opened into the structure of the design office by new team boss Andrea Stella, who sacked the technical director and instituted a business restructure.
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The painful process of changing tack has begun to bear fruit, with the first part of a three-part major upgrade package arriving on Lando Norris’s car at the weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix, where he qualified and finished fourth, comfortably his best result of the year.
But with only one weekend — and run to the sprint format — in the books, it’s unclear how much of that big result is down to the car compared to the driver.
“We know he really loves racing at the Red Bull Ring,” said Michael Lamonato, host of the Fox Sports Pit Talk podcast. “He’s never finished lower than sixth or qualified lower than seventh bar once.
“This was another very strong performance from him.
“He was the only McLaren driver who had the upgrade package and did really well.”
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Ian Parkes, Speedcafe’s European F1 editor, said the team was confident of the car’s gains, even if Spielberg wasn’t a clear validation of the new parts.
“Speaking to all three guys over the course of the weekend — Andrea Stella, team principal, Lando and Oscar (Piastri) — there was a sense that they have made a step forward compared to what they had previously.
“There are signs enough there that, yes, now we can accelerate with the other two areas of the upgrade package due to come for the British and Hungarian grands prix.
“But let’s see what really happens at Silverstone when we’ve got more opportunity to assess and also with the first part at least of the upgrade package that we saw in Austria going onto Oscar’s car.”
The team hasn’t abandoned hope of moving up from its current sixth place on the constructors championship table and ending the season among the fastest four cars in the sport.
On average it’s been the sixth-fastest machine this season, well behind Alpine in fifth and comfortably adrift of the frontrunning four.
“It’s a strong result, clearly their best single result of the year, but they’ve got a mountain to climb still,” Mat Coch, Speedcafe’s F1 editor, said.
“Being the fourth best team — not necessarily in the constructors championship but being fourth best on the road — is a big ask to do that consistently.
“As we’ve seen this year … Ferrari is inconsistent. Aston Martin, which is clearly the second-best team at the moment, is inconsistent. Mercedes is up and down week to week as well.
“So it’s going to be interesting. If they can iron out some of those peaks and troughs, that’s got to be the aim for everyone at this point, because Red Bull doesn’t seem to have them.
“It’s achievable. They’ve got to iron that out. And if you can do that, your bad weekend aren’t going to be so bad. Your good ones might not necessarily be quite as big if you flatten out that curve, but you’re going to be more consistent, and over the course of the last 10 races of the year that’s going to stand you in good stead.”
The first episode of Pit Talk, hosted by Michael Lamonato along with Speedcafe’s Mat Coch and Ian Parkes, is live now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever you get your favourite podcasts.