The crucial next steps for McLaren on its path to F1 recovery

Some people have been seeing McLaren in a very different light recently. In the 2019 film Hobbs & Shaw, the McLaren Technology Centre factory becomes a villainous organisation’s base. In the HBO science fiction television comedy series Avenue 5, the same building is restyled as mission control for an interplanetary cruise ship operator. Most recently, Disney+ Star Wars TV spinoff Andor reimagined the MTC as a bustling space port.  

But, to Formula 1 fans, the results of the real-life work completed inside the gigantic Norman Foster-designed complex appear very familiar. If anything in 2023, they’re looking rather worse than previous years, when it appeared that the orange team was finally gaining the momentum required to take it back to race and title-winning peaks it has not scaled since 2008 and Lewis Hamilton’s first world championship triumph. 

At this stage in 2022, McLaren had racked up 46 points and sat fourth in the constructors’ championship, its start to life in the new rules era exactly where it had finished the last in 2021, and even behind the third place it rather impressively secured in 2020. Now, however, the squad is fifth in the teams’ standings with just 14 points from the opening five rounds. It’s just a one-position slip, but standing in stark contrast are the results and silverware haul of Aston Martin.

McLaren’s former midfield rival is currently Red Bull’s closest challenger and has four podiums and counting. Since 2019, McLaren has managed eight rostrum visits – a total Aston seems on course to match in this campaign alone, judging by the typically ferocious form of its new talisman, former McLaren star Fernando Alonso. 

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” insists McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown. “But it’s not as good as it should be.”

Correct on both scores. First off, McLaren has been mightily unlucky at various points so far in 2023. In the season opener, Lando Norris had to stop five times due to a pneumatic air leak and ended up 17th, establishing his worst ever F1 career result, which he has since equalled twice more. In the same Bahrain race, new arrival Oscar Piastri retired due to an electrics issue developing on his steering column. Next time out in Jeddah, a chunk of Piastri’s front wing came loose thanks to contact with Pierre Gasly’s Alpine, and flew back and hit Norris’s wing, destroying both their races in one fell swoop.  

Piastri was so seriously struck with a stomach bug in Baku that he could only manage to eat “four pieces of toast for the whole weekend” but he finished a still impressive 11th, two spots behind Norris. This followed both McLarens making the points in Australia and Norris reaching Q3 in ‘normal’ Baku qualifying, which Piastri had done in Jeddah.

While McLaren's 2023 F1 car hasn't met targets, the team has also been hit with a barrage of misfortune

Photo by: Michael Potts / Motorsport Images

Then most recently in Miami, Norris was rear-ended by the AlphaTauri of Nyck de Vries at Turn 1, which damaged his car, while Piastri ended up 19th after his MCL60 suffered a brake-by-wire failure early on, which he had to drive around to the end, finishing a lap down on Max Verstappen. Norris finished just two spots higher again, but this time 87.7 seconds behind the winner. 

All the Bahrain woe was, however, self-inflicted, given the circumstances that stifled both McLarens there. And in Miami, Norris insisted that the estimated 0.2-0.3s he was losing as a result of de Vries’s latest rookie gaffe “didn’t change my day”. McLaren’s 2023 malaise runs deeper than it and its fans would like. And it all comes back to inside the gleaming MTC. 

PLUS: Why McLaren's 2023 may be a building year, despite new F1 car's Red Bull hints

Upheaval at home

It was at McLaren’s HQ in February where both Brown and newly appointed team principal Andrea Stella frankly admitted that the team would be starting the season off the pace and not where it had targeted being in the second year of F1’s new rules cycle, thanks to missed car development targets. Stella felt his squad’s aims therefore had to be “realistic” and muted, a wait until Baku in late April required before a major car upgrade would put the MCL60 back where it should have started in Bahrain in terms of performance. 

Running through all the big changes was an apparent frustration that previously McLaren’s updates hadn’t been coming quickly enough, or making big enough gains when new ideas did arrive

That milestone passed two races ago. But between those two points, McLaren enacted a major staffing upheaval as a result of its underwhelming position and poor car design execution. This not only revealed what if felt had been going wrong, but in turn it impacted the efforts to turn things around. 

Headlining the change announced after the second round in Jeddah was the exit with immediate effect of former technical director James Key, in post since 2019 after joining from what was then Toro Rosso. But McLaren also moved to overhaul its technical structure, replacing Key’s position with three roles reporting to Stella.  

David Sanchez will become technical director of car concept and performance at the start of next year after leaving Ferrari, with Peter Prodromou moving to be technical director for aerodynamics and Neil Houldey promoted into the newly created role of technical director for engineering and design. Prodromou will be supported by the promoted Giuseppe Pesce, as director of aerodynamics and chief of staff. Above them all, Piers Thynne – previously the team’s operations director – is a new dedicated chief operating officer for the F1 team, rather than its overall parent company, supporting Stella. 

The axing of James Key has triggered an overhaul of McLaren's management structure

Photo by: FIA Pool

“What we’ve done is optimise the organisation and given real clarity to roles,” Brown explains of the decision making around these big changes. Running through them all was an apparent frustration that previously McLaren’s updates hadn’t been coming quickly enough, or making big enough gains when new ideas did arrive.

“At the end of last year, second half of the year, I wasn’t happy with the progress we were making. And so, when I got the opportunity to put in Andrea Stella as team principal [following Andreas Seidl’s departure to Sauber/Alfa Romeo/soon Audi], and he’s very technical, that was a move I was very happy with.  

“First thing I asked him to do is take a look at why we weren’t developing at the pace I felt we should. And what he identified was that we structurally weren’t optimised. So, we went about setting out what would the optimum structure look like.” 

As that new technical structure beds in, in the meantime Norris reckons McLaren is “fighting for ninth and 10th at the minute” – the scraps left behind from the drivers feasting from Red Bull and Aston, and to a lesser extent Mercedes and Ferrari too.

“It doesn’t sound like a lot,” Norris adds, “but the small points will add up.” 

But that is not remotely near what McLaren’s ambitions add up to. Nor is it befitting the ultra-successful history of a team that has amassed 20 world titles. So, what does McLaren have to do to recover to the positions it wants to be fighting for? 

Short-term aim: fix the MCL60 

Off track, 2023 is quite the year for McLaren, as it celebrates 60 years since its formation as Bruce McLaren Motor Racing. The team’s followers should look out for a particular celebration around the upcoming Monaco GP. That anniversary is why McLaren’s 2023 challenger has the designation it does. But, based on what it’s achieved so far, the MCL60 is not going to go down as one of the team’s most-famous or most-loved creations.  

Its 2021 machine, the MCL35M, is McLaren’s most recent winner, the memory of that momentous 1-2 result at Monza still providing a certain boost to team staff. But that car also claimed four other podiums thanks to Norris and another near-win in what should be the final Sochi F1 race. The MCL60 can’t get to such lofty heights, but improvements have been made.  

The MCL60 isn't winning any popularity prizes at McLaren just yet

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

“We have a good baseline to really work from now,” Norris says of his car since it was fitted with the floor upgrade Stella highlighted back in February. “[That means] more confidence to be able to work from where we are.” 

The MCL60, which unlike its MCL36 predecessor is running at the weight limit, is “strong in straightline braking”, says Stella, who adds: “We see that the car is strong in high-speed sections.”

F1 is yet to visit any truly high-speed track layouts so far in 2023. But even since the Baku upgrade, the car suffers badly from an aerodynamic inefficiency, aka, a drag problem. McLaren admitted as such back at its season launch. The class of the current field, the Red Bull RB19, has exactly the reverse situation and its aero efficiency is one of its key strengths.  

The MCL60 also suffers when running in low temperatures and low-grip conditions, which is why McLaren felt Miami was a “reality check”, according to Stella. The course around the Hard Rock Stadium is full of the “longer corners” Norris reckons his machine is not well suited to. And this centres on its off-throttle and off-brake performance, where the drivers are clinging on trying to keep speed up with attacking braking approaches. But they don’t have the tools and grip to compensate sufficiently. On this, Stella says, “our car doesn’t work very well”. 

Even since the Baku upgrade, the car suffers badly from an aerodynamic inefficiency, aka, a drag problem. McLaren admitted as such back at its season launch

The Baku update featured a heavily revised floor edge, plus inevitable harder-to-spot changes to the venturi tunnels underneath. Its main aim was to add downforce, while not fundamentally changing the MCL60’s handling characteristics. A new beam wing addition was, however, targeted at improving the aero efficiency problem. 

“It’s not like I saw some different [floor] channels on another car [and] I can copy, it’s a very three-dimensional flow,” Stella explains. “This is also why you not only have to get the basic concepts right, which is something we haven’t done for the start to the season, but it also starts to become a game of millimetres here and there.” 

These critical tiny changes will feed into the next part of McLaren’s update plan. After minor refinements that were due to arrive for this weekend's now cancelled race at Imola, this is coming in two more major upgrades, one either side of the summer break.  

MCL60 updates have provided a way forward but the team still languishes behind the top four

Photo by: Jake Grant / Motorsport Images

The first will be introduced in a split over the races in Montreal in June and at Silverstone in July, with Canada likely to be the point where McLaren introduces new upper aero surface shapes, which Stella suggested in Australia would amount to looking “like kind of a B-spec car”. For Silverstone, another floor change is predicted.  

This approach skips changes coming at the next sprint weekend in Austria, where track time is very limited. McLaren opted to bring its first new floor to Baku and the first 2023 sprint because evaluating the correlation between a floor’s predicted results and real ones isn’t a complex task. Dozens of pressure taps built into them mean the team can quickly create a map of what the aero is doing and see if it matched the MTC factory’s predictions. Happily for McLaren, it did in Baku. 

“We have definitely been reassured that as soon as we saw the initial data from the car, [it was] correlating with what was expected,” Stella explains, “and there was no significant level of porpoising.” 

The Baku floor/beam wing update alone is thought to be worth up to 0.3s in lap time gain versus what the MCL60 was capable of in its launch spec. With much bigger changes coming, Brown hopes there is much “more to come” in terms of pace improvements. 

But, as he points out, “that’s what the nine other teams are doing” too. And so McLaren is also having to look longer-term for those desired greater prizes. 

Medium-term aim: harness new technical structure and escape the crowded midfield 

Bigger aims for F1 squads get more complex, which means longer-term thinking. And a key step on McLaren’s journey will be to combine the gains and lessons learned developing the MCL60 with the potential it feels it has in its new technical structure.  

According to Norris, Stella and Brown, even just the reorganisation itself has caused quick improvements, let alone the impact of still-to-arrive hires. A McLaren recruitment drive to bolster its aero department led to new deals with 15 people, including some from rivals at Red Bull, Aston and Ferrari. It is headlined by Sanchez, but also includes signing senior Aston aerodynamicist Mariano Alperin. 

Brown has given the green light to a technical team influx of new talent

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“It’s about the efficiency and how you work through things and coming up with the ideas from that side of it,” Norris says of the impact of the technical team changes. “And working from there, and just how people work together at the same time, just the teamwork and team ethic of it all.” 

When asked about his charge’s comments, Brown claims that now “there’s a lot of energy and clarity inside the MTC”, while Stella reckons “certainly, what we have observed over the last weeks is a re-energised group of people and if anything, even more cohesion”.  

Soon to be boosting the design effort is McLaren’s new simulator and manufacturing facility. But, most significantly, its new wind tunnel will finally be on stream inside the MTC next month after being commissioned by Seidl back in 2019. Such massive infrastructure projects always take time to complete and then bear fruit, but it is understood that in McLaren’s case this was hampered by the pandemic and delays wrought by the lockdowns and various working restrictions, plus strains on resources. 

Soon, McLaren will stop using the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne – an arrangement the team feels has limitations in addition to the obvious time/travel inefficiencies that have contributed to the drag issues of its current package, plus those in the MCL36 of 2022. 

"You used to have a front, mid and back field. There’s no longer a back field. I wouldn’t even say it’s the big four. It’s Red Bull and kind of everybody else" Zak Brown

“Certainly with the wind tunnel that we use, it is even more difficult than other facilities and it will become easier and more representative in the wind tunnel that we’ll have available in the short term,” reckons Stella. “This is because you have a better representation thanks to, for instance, having adaptive walls in the [new] wind tunnel of what the car sees on track.”  

The combined efforts of McLaren’s overhauled technical team and its new facilities must be aimed at significantly improving the handling characteristics of its F1 machines. Both Norris and former team-mate Daniel Ricciardo struggled to adapt their preferred styles to the McLaren package’s recalcitrant requirements on braking and corner entry – the Briton was able to cope better. Piastri noted back in testing that the MCL60 has a “similar” handling feel to the machine he only tested in 2022.  

Addressing this for 2024 and through the next generation of McLarens would provide a major boost to its highly rated young driving stars. If it can be successful in doing so while outdeveloping its rivals, then logically McLaren would expect to escape what is a very crowded midfield. 

McLaren remains part of a very congested F1 midfield pack

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

This is exacerbating its struggles with the MCL60 – it leaves the team at the mercy of falling badly down the order, as it did in Miami, when other teams get things nailed at venues that suit them better. Balancing that issue for McLaren is that it could be in a far worse championship position thanks to Alpine – its regular rival these past few years – dropping huge points chances in Bahrain, Australia and Baku. Only now are the two squads level on points, after Alpine scooped up eighth and ninth positions in Miami.

“It’s unbelievably tight,” Brown says of McLaren’s current position. “You used to have a front, mid and back field. There’s no longer a back field. I wouldn’t even say it’s the big four. It’s Red Bull and kind of everybody else.”  

Long-term aim: get back in victory and title contention 

That Monza 2021 win felt like a major milestone on McLaren’s journey back to lasting F1 success. Two of the key players involved that day are gone, Ricciardo paying the price for his poor form compared to Norris’s over two years, and Seidl keen to take up a chance to head Audi’s upcoming F1 project closer to his home and family in Germany. 

Norris feels that Piastri is pushing him closer than Ricciardo did, even based on their short time as McLaren team-mates. That should boost the team further should it successfully retrace its steps back to Monza 2021 and then push on beyond.  

In a sign of McLaren’s confidence and intent, Brown explained in Miami that he’d like his squad and its rivals to sign up to F1’s next Concorde Agreement “sooner rather than later, just for the stability and longevity of the sport”.

“I think everything’s working great, if you look at the health of the sport,” he says. “I also think it’s a little bit of a rinse and repeat. I think it’s working. I don’t think there’s much to add or change to the existing agreement, so I don’t think it needs to be a prolonged conversation either.”  

The next Concorde Agreement would bind the teams from the start of 2026 and F1’s next car-design rules upheaval. Should McLaren’s progress not have been as great as it hopes by then, pressure will be mounting on Brown and co. Remember that McLaren used to have a three-person design team leadership structure when Stella joined from Ferrari back in 2015, which it abandoned feeling it was too confusing in 2018, and signed Key to lead the designs solo for the following year. Plus, there’s the chance that Norris might be poached by a rival at the end of his current McLaren deal, set to run out at the end of 2025, if things don’t improve as he wants. 

But with the chance to leap up F1’s competitive order created by the new engine requirements, plus a mooted expansion in active aero parts, it begs the question of when teams such as McLaren will start identifying that as their big chance to fundamentally improve their competitive positions. That was a big talking and PR point with the change to the ground effect cars planned for 2021 and realised in 2022. Such a repeat in thinking in the run-up to 2026 would be quite the redressed set for McLaren…

Can McLaren return to previous heights, last enjoyed with a 1-2 at the 2021 Italian GP?

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images