Can McLaren's evolutionary-but-innovative MCL38 deliver Norris' first F1 win?

McLaren's rocket-like ascent through the 2023 order once it acquired its mid-season upgrade jetpack took the team from Formula 1's midfield mire into the fight for regular points and podia, adding a flash of excitement to the second half of the year. Now, the goalposts have shifted for 2024, and the Woking squad will have the weight of expectation laid upon its shoulders in its aims to reel in the Red Bull squad.

That's no easy task by any stretch of the imagination. As the team progresses from its MCL60 to its new MCL38, it will need to build upon the foundations that it laid last season, and strengthen its position as a realistic contender rather than fall back behind the other outfits chomping at the bit to slay the rampant Bull at the top of the mountain.

The Orange Army has been strengthened by the addition of key technical figureheads, those who can impart their knowledge to the team to help it reach new heights. Signing David Sanchez from Ferrari and Rob Marshall from Red Bull should allow the team to plot its next steps as it seeks to end its run of scoring a single grand prix win in a 12-year span.

At this stage, the car appears to be evolutionary as McLaren made significant strides over 2023 with its aerodynamic progress. It already boasted the contemporary aero mod-cons in the final stages of last season, and thus its priorities shifted somewhat: rather than opt for a complete redefinition of its bodywork surfaces, it instead needed to pick up from the data it had gathered and produce a chassis more capable of housing everything and using it to its full potential.

Team principal Andrea Stella explained that the MCL38 has "a number of innovations on the car, but not all the areas we want to address have been completed for our launch-spec car". He added: "Those areas now become the focus of our in-season development, which is already in progress."

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What those innovations refer to remains unclear, and it's difficult to tell based on what McLaren has divulged with its launch car, but there are some key differences that have been revealed at this early stage. Unsurprisingly, given the rapidly emerging 2024 launch season bingo card, these can be seen around the front suspension sidepods - but not necessarily in the way expected.

McLaren has retained its pull-rod front suspension layout on the MC38

Photo by: McLaren

McLaren has continued with the pull-rod front suspension layout but with the rear leg of its upper wishbone positioned much lower down as it chases the right kinematic properties to get the most out of the floor. The push-rod rear suspension remains in place, having switched to that in the development of last season's car.

The sidepod shape itself is an evolution of last year's package but with a more expansive undercut and continuation of its use of the slide-like channel in the upper surface. But it strays away from other teams in the development of its inlet, where the team appears to have extruded the upper lip rather than the lower one.

This arguably moves it more in line with the arrangement used by last year's Mercedes W14, albeit to a more understated extent, and the mirrors are mounted onto this. A wing-like structure extends outboard, perhaps offering a chance to exert control over tyre wake or develop some vortices that strengthens the flow seen over the sidepods.

"It's not a long time at all, but I felt comfortable very quickly, which is always a good sign!" Lando Norris

Further trends have been bucked as McLaren has moved away from the wider, shorter inlets that it had developed last year, instead producing a squarer aperture. The inlets remain small, but large enough to apparently shrink the air intake behind the drivers' heads. Doing so allows for tighter packaging of the engine cover, and thus reducing the effect of its wake on the rear wing. The cannon-like outlets at the rear of the bodywork look slightly larger, which allows the surfaces below to be more tightly packaged around the gearbox to improve the aero characteristics here.

Differences are subtle in the rear wing, but there are some of note: the corner at which the endplate meets the mainplane is sharper, perhaps to offer a more concentrated endplate effect and improve the rear wing efficiency. Furthermore, like others, it has shown its car with the semi-separated wing tips that should enhance the strength of its performance further.

But there are just as many questions as answers in the images McLaren has revealed. Its floor, as noted by Motorsport.com F1 editor Jon Noble, has remained suffused in mystery as the images have deliberately obfuscated the edge.

The front wing also seems somewhat similar to last season's, and it would be odd to assume that it had made no progress over the winter on this front. Compare it with the curvaceous design of the Mercedes W15, also revealed on Wednesday, and it seems to be a more basic solution. That said, it's true that the complexity of design does not necessarily translate to performance.

The launch-spec MCL38's front wing appears conspicuously similar to last year, suggesting McLaren may be keeping something in its back pocket

Photo by: McLaren

McLaren undertook its shakedown of the MCL38 at a wet Silverstone, so early impressions are expected to be somewhat more clouded than the usual exploratory runs. Lando Norris alluded to that after his first go with the team's new machinery, telling Sky Sports that "there are still many questions for us through the whole of winter testing to try and understand".

"It takes time, there's quite a few changes on the car for this year, so it's going to take a few days for us to understand everything," he continued. "But from a driving perspective, a couple of laps, it's probably a 50-second lap (on the Silverstone short course) so it takes a little bit longer than that to get the proper feeling back. It's not a long time at all, but I felt comfortable very quickly, which is always a good sign!"

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There's likely more to come from McLaren in Bahrain testing and, as Stella has alluded to, another year of studiously getting on with further developments that should bring more life to the MCL38. What the team hopes to avoid is another season in which it starts on the back foot, where brake cooling issues caused myriad problems in its exploratory runs in Bahrain and sapped away at valuable mileage. It should avoid that, and shouldn't need to drag itself out of an early-season hole this time around.

If last year's developments helped the team leapfrog the entire midfield and put itself into podium contention, what could similar gains in performance yield in 2024? One supposes it depends on where the team starts from that'll be the deciding factor - and if it's the car that finally yields Norris' first F1 win.

The low-key MCL38 launch precluded a brief shakedown at Silverstone, but Norris said he liked what he'd experienced

Photo by: McLaren