Why McLaren thinks its 2024 F1 car is already faster than the MCL60

How major sports teams and organisations generate staff and driver/player motivation is a fascinating topic. At this time of year, the top American Football teams are trying to make deep runs through the NFL playoffs. There are so many examples of team coaches galvanising their players to hit harder or run faster in these critical knockout games by passing on media headlines or social media comments.

The ‘chip on the shoulder’ effect can be a valuable tool in a brutal sport. Formula 1 teams do it too, albeit in different ways.

A driver strapping into a 200mph racing machine has plenty of adrenaline flowing. But, and Autosport knows this well, such tactics can be handy tools for getting team staff back at the factory or working away from home to go the extra mile amid the already considerable sacrifices required over a now 24-race calendar. 

We understand this because Otmar Szafnauer told us he’d done exactly that in response to a ‘season predictions’ video we made ahead of the 2022 season. This had the Alpine squad he then helmed picked as likely having the ‘most disappointing’ campaign. It did go from fourth to fifth in the constructors’, but scored no wins and never looked capable of title contention...  

Anyway, then there’s this week’s McLaren “whatever it takes” trailer video using, among others, headlines posted on Autosport.com during the early difficult part of the team’s 2023 campaign. It was an artistic way of saying: ‘we are going to prove something in 2024’. 

A bit of fire can be a very good thing. Sure, it runs the risk of a team in any sport being burned by future poor performance. But, right now, McLaren’s efforts to publicise its 2024 livery reveal show a team seemingly brimming with confidence.  

Photo by: McLaren

McLaren revealed its 2024 livery on Tuesday evening as it hopes to continue its strong progress from last season

That demonstrates again just how good it was after its early summer upgrade plan came into reality in 2023 and those nine podiums, plus sprint win and pole. And it also highlights just how far McLaren has come since that downbeat car launch last year, with a package that was behind its desired development curve and indeed initially performed poorly – hence the accurate headlines – in the early phase of last season. 

PLUS: Can McLaren make the next step to challenge for F1 titles again?

In revealing just a livery for what we now know will be called the MCL38, as McLaren returns to the numbering system used before 2023’s MCL60 was named in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the team’s founding, but skipping the unused MCL37, the orange team is already doing something else differently.  

This is more a Red Bull methodology for the time of year, although McLaren has at least had the good grace to call a livery launch exactly that and not pretend a colour scheme tweak draped on a show or old car represents a ‘new’ machine. By holding back showing the MCL38’s launch specification until 14 February, when McLaren will reveal its new challenger but without a media launch event, two things are occurring.  

“[We are] pushing everything last minute, to the limit” Andrea Stella

The first is that the team is deliberately moving to grab attention earlier than most teams have in recent years. This gives them and their glut of new sponsors a marketing boost ahead of what again will be a crowded early-to-mid-February car launch period.  

And that has become so because of the other element to McLaren’s split launch approach. This is highlighted by team principal Andrea Stella explaining it is “pushing everything last minute, to the limit” in terms of building the first 2024 challenger. But, he added, “so far we are on plan”. 

Stella was speaking alongside McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown in the futuristic lecture theatre built into the subterranean parts of the sprawling McLaren Technology Centre, which goes far deeper under the Surrey countryside and away from its famous windtunnel emissions-cooling lake. The confidence was similarly flowing through the whole event. 

Brown even used it as another opportunity to expand on his “big concern” about “the AlphaTauri-Red Bull alliance”. That, he said, “AlphaTauri is, from what I understand, moving to the UK, which I think will benefit both teams”.  

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Brown's concern about the close ties between Red Bull and AlphaTauri show he deems the former a real rival

Such comments, which Brown had started making in the final rounds of the 2023 campaign, shows again McLaren’s fears of the potential of the coming closer partnership between Red Bull’s two squads and what that might theoretically mean to their resource levels.  

But that Brown cares so much also demonstrates that McLaren views Red Bull as a real on-track rival. The team is no longer in a state of continual rebuilding and midfield mediocrity.

Stella, sticking closer to the expected launch messaging, was also keen to point out how McLaren has been “integrating the new infrastructure that we have delivered in 2023” into designing and building the MCL38.  This, Stella said, “has actually been developed entirely at the MTC wind tunnel from September onwards”, with McLaren ending its Toyota Cologne wind tunnel usage last August. 

“It's been developed in terms of the new simulator [too],” Stella added. “And composite and metallic parts are being produced in the new manufacturing infrastructure and facilities that we have delivered.” 

McLaren has also been boosted by the arrival of former Ferrari head of vehicle concept and Red Bull chief engineering officer – David Sanchez and Rob Marshall. Stella outlined how in the few weeks since they were first allowed into the MTC after exiting their previous team contracts, they have each been offering their respective “personal approach” which he thinks “has engaged people in fascinating technical conversations”. 

“They come with quite a lot of knowledge – no surprise,” Stella continued. “They've been part of great teams, great projects, and the good thing is that this knowledge, we see that integrates with what we knew – with our know-how.  

“So, it's not like, ‘oh we should do things in this way, which is opposite to what you do’, but, ‘we can do things in this way, which adds a little bit to what you do’. This was quite refreshing in a way. We see the momentum, the energy, the ideas – the flow through the organisation”. 

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Stella has continued to push McLaren forward after the departure of Andreas Seidl to Sauber

That is now a rather complex technical structure that essentially comprises three technical directors, with Sanchez and Marshall working with Peter Prodromou leading aerodynamics and Neil Houldey in charge of engineering and design.  

But Stella also hinted that those combined efforts will be distributed across McLaren’s fledgeling 2025 and 2026 design efforts, rather than all the team’s new and established technical signings being directed to work on the MCL38. But that is of most interest right now, of course.

The question the 4 January 2024 issue of Autosport magazine posed it outright – “McLaren: Red Bull’s next big rival?”.  To truly get there, McLaren is going to have to fix the weaknesses demonstrated even after it made its massive performance gains mid-way through last year.  

Having first established that there was indeed merit in what had been a theory in Abu Dhabi, Stella said McLaren had concluded “definitely there’s some areas that we could’ve looked into”, specifically on “the aerodynamics side”

It must address what Stella said in glorious engineer speak was how from “an operational point of view, we could have done better” in 2023. This meant the many small mistakes – mainly in qualifying – that put McLaren’s MCL60s often out of position.  

Stella wants Lando Norris to focus on his dependability in terms of qualifying performances, but also consider how Max Verstappen is "really establishing new standards in terms of how consistently you can perform strongly”. Oscar Piastri needs to take another step after his very impressive rookie offering. 

But Stella had ended 2023 wondering “have we embedded... some elements of the car just losing too much grip too rapidly in some conditions?”. This was particularly the case after Norris had blown another possible pole shot against Verstappen late in Abu Dhabi qualifying.  

In response to an update enquiry on this from Autosport, Stella reframed it as a case of McLaren wondering “whether we had made the car quicker, but somehow slightly more difficult to be exploited when you go to the limit in qualifying”. Over the first part of the off-season, having first established that there was indeed merit in what had been a theory in Abu Dhabi, Stella said McLaren had concluded “definitely there’s some areas that we could’ve looked into”, specifically on “the aerodynamics side”.  

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Norris missed out on pole in Abu Dhabi with a final sector slide, which the team believes was a function of the McLaren being difficult to exploit on the limit in qualifying trim

“On these cars, aerodynamics and ride, they go pretty much hand-in-hand – because you know that you would like to run these cars as low as possible to the ground,” he explained. “This is one of the challenges for every team. And looking at where the right compromise is from this point of view for instance.  

“Just to give you a concrete, real example of where we’ve been looking at, this is an area that deserves some attention. There’s some other areas which I wouldn’t disclose just for a matter of protecting our IP, let’s say, but this was one of the priorities of the winter.  

“Some of the benefits may be embedded onto the launch car, but actually some of the projects belong to a workstream that may land trackside with some other developments. Because some things require a few months to be addressed.” 

So, McLaren is hopeful it either has or will soon fix that confirmed erratic handling issue at some point in its 2024 development plan. This is set to unfurl through the opening quarter of the season, given typical upgrade lead times. 

But, overall, Stella and Brown were clear the only way to get McLaren back to winning regularly once again in F1 is just to make its package faster and better.  

In another boosting comment, Stella revealed that the team sees no “diminishing returns” in the development path it really started hurtling down with its 2023 Austrian GP upgrade and says McLaren currently feels “it seems like we can maintain it”. 

“What we are looking at very carefully is to make sure that we are in condition to cash in these performance opportunities that do seem to be available,” Stella said. “This is reflected, like I say, in numbers.  

“So, we can't fool ourselves, we need to see these numbers go up. And, right now, what we seem to be finding in development. But it's a slightly different story when it comes to competitiveness on track, because this depends on what the opposition has done.” 

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

McLaren is confident it can continue the upward trajectory it found with upgrades in 2023 after a dreadful start to the campaign

Reading between the lines and McLaren’s current position is clearer. Everything it is seeing in its data suggests the MCL38 is already a step forward compared to the MCL60. But it cannot know how any gains relate to the opposition.  

That’s always a launch season theme, but it explains why even when asked for any stated targets in 2024, neither Stella nor Brown put up a specific desired constructors’ championship finishing position.  

McLaren ended up fourth last year having, at times, been a “blend of ninth quickest to second quickest” over the course of the campaign, as Brown put it to Autosport in Las Vegas last November. Upping that average with a car that competes in F1’s 2024 upper echelons from the off is therefore the subtextual expectation. 

“[But] when we think specifically about Red Bull,” Stella concluded, “there's one element that obviously I think puts everyone in doubt as to what's going to happen in 2024 and it's the fact that they haven't developed their car very much [in 2023]…”

Photo by: McLaren

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