How 2024 missteps will be the making of McLaren

There were hands on heads all around. Cheeks blown out and red. The crushing realisation of a dream denied at the last gasp by the era's dominant power. All because their concentration had collapsed at a late moment. Little did they know what a run of success was to follow.

The Saracens English rugby side came with four minutes of winning a first Premiership title at Twickenham in 2010. It was to be denied by Leicester that day – the Tigers team clinching its seventh title because it just didn’t know when it was beaten.

In the years since, how their roles have reversed. Saracens, admittedly not without controversy (so no salary/budget cap snide required, but handy for remembering the results of Formula 1’s 2023 budget cap should be released soon), have since become a six-time champion side in the English league.

Not your standard start to an Autosport column but worth considering alongside the tale of the McLaren F1 squad to this point in 2024.

The orange team has scored two wins – its first multi-victory season since 2012 and, if it can keep up its current rate of point-scoring and Red Bull does likewise, it will forge ahead in the constructors’ championship around the Singapore GP. There, Red Bull is braced for more 2023-style pain, after which the title run-in across the Americas and Middle East kicks off in earnest.

Lando Norris sits 78 points behind Max Verstappen in the drivers’ standings. Since the Spanish GP, the Briton has been the reigning world champion’s closest challenger. After his near defeat at Barcelona, Norris declared “we can” win the 2024 title.

McLaren has seen several wins slip through its grasp this year, hurting Norris's title hopes

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

It was a long shot even before Verstappen extended his lead over the following two events. But Spain is still the Dutchman’s most recent victory.

Verstappen will start winning again soon. Surely, marker-sending Max will want to make a statement in front of his home fans at Zandvoort even before the RB20 gets to its aerodynamic-efficiency happiest hunting ground around Monza’s royal park.

But Norris didn’t help the championship quest he revealed he’s still on in those emotionally charged Budapest radio messages by his mistakes early in the Spa race last time out. On a day when Verstappen started seven places further back and was about to discover that overtaking other Class A cars was pretty difficult, Norris allowed the Red Bull driver to gain two points back in their battle.

Stella said after the team lost its 1-2 winning position in the thrilling dry-wet-dry Silverstone race that “we are racing against the teams that have won championships and championships”

In the other MCL38, Oscar Piastri erred in sliding too deep at his pitbox and lost precious seconds in his second stop that might’ve allowed him the chance to attack Lewis Hamilton ahead late on – that overtaking challenge notwithstanding.

PLUS: Was the Belgian Grand Prix Piastri's best F1 race yet?

We’ve covered McLaren's mistakes before. While I therefore don’t need to go through the full list again, I’d like to retract my assertion that Piastri blew a Monaco victory shot by not hooking up his best sectors when it mattered in Q3.

After a chat with team boss Andrea Stella, it’s clear at no point did McLaren or Piastri view that as a chance gone begging – the reality was Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was too good on the day. But those Spa driver errors mean the McLaren mistakes topic is still in the air as August unfurls.

From a team point of view, McLaren has done brilliantly to secure (and since lock-down) the talents of two of F1’s best young drivers. It can rival Mercedes and Ferrari to the claim of having the best line-up right now.

Stella is clear that Piastri didn't miss out on a potential Monaco win by not stitching his best sectors together in qualifying

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Leaving Spa, Stella vowed to work with Norris to understand if there is something specific behind what the Italian called “statistically some opportunities that tend to happen in the early stages” of races. McLaren is also going assist Piastri in not repeating overshooting his pitbox at services. The Spa incident grabbed attention, but he slid past his marks twice at Silverstone too.

Ultimately, it’s up to these two superstar drivers to fully reach the levels it’s long been predicted they would.

For McLaren, it’s worth recalling how Stella said after the team lost its 1-2 winning position in the thrilling dry-wet-dry Silverstone race by not double-stacking its cars at the first stops, as eventual winner Mercedes did, that “we are racing against the teams that have won championships and championships”.

There are plenty of parallels from recent F1 of teams discovering that art of winning he was alluding to. This ultimately makes them as resilient as Leicester at Twickenham (and how, we might hope and looking outside motorsport for a brief moment again, the England men’s football team might one day succeed in this area given their defeat against Spain last month).

Red Bull provides one such example – from the same era as we started with above. Back in 2009 and 2010 it encountered plenty of driver errors, initially didn’t have the double diffuser, and there was that Turkey 2010 intra-team collision between Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber.

“It’s a lot easier on the way up then when you reach the top and then suddenly you become the one under pressure,” Red Bull team boss Christian Horner told me last year. “The team was learning, the drivers were learning…”

That sounds familiar, but there’s a danger lesson from just before for McLaren too. That’s how BMW Sauber opted to switch its resources to its 2009 car in anticipation of winning with the KERS systems introduced along with downforce-slashing bodywork changes just when Robert Kubica had taken the standings lead in mid-2008. That still rankles Kubica to this day given how disastrously 2009 turned out.

Lessons from history that McLaren should avoid are plentiful - not least how BMW Sauber abandoned its positive trajectory in 2008 and threw weight behind its hybrid dud for 2009

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

This is why it’s important not just to give missteps of the like McLaren have made in 2024 a free pass. But this time around, F1’s next big car design rule changes come a year and a half away in 2026. Given its current trajectory, McLaren should surely be contenders from the off in 2025.

Its post-summer updates plan – multiple are lined up at a time when Red Bull is struggling to add performance to the RB20 and understand fully what it already has – suggests McLaren could even get a taste of success in 2024 too given how that constructors’ gap is coming down.

What it could go on to achieve with the boost of a first such world title since 1999 is truly tantalising for McLaren fans – or anyone that wants to see a long-term rebuilding team succeed.

McLaren is getting used to the winning feeling again, which bodes well for hopes of a multi-team fight at the front

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images