This year has hardly seen McLaren begin the Formula One season in stellar fashion. Granted they are currently fifth in the constructors’ championship but only have 14 points from five races which is more than disappointing.

McLaren have been jumped by Aston Martin who recruited Red Bull’s Dan Fallows – Adrian Newey’s ex right hand man – for the start of the 2022 campaign.

 

 

McLaren new wind tunnel looms

Both teams have new wind tunnels in the pipeline and McLaren’s should come on line a year ahead of their Silverstone based rivals.

Whilst Aston Martin are currently the second best team in F1 with 102 constructors’ points, Zak Brown believes it is his team who has the better driver line up.

“The energy inside the team right now is awesome,” McLaren’s CEO told assembled media.

“You have a bad weekend, you dust yourself off. Everyone’s highly motivated. The culture is great and that’s something that Andrea [Stella] is really focused on.

Huge Ferrari donation

 

 

Brown: ‘We’ve got best driver lineup’

“We’re going to have good days, bad days, that’s motor racing. But we’re all very excited. We see what’s coming.

“We’re excited about our driver line-up. I think our driver line-up for the foreseeable future is good as anyone’s, if not maybe better given the youth and experience, so we’re pumped.”

Cynics amongst us may argue that having the best driver line up is irrelevant if the team can’t build a car that’s quick and pleasing for the drivers to handle.

The MCL60 looks every bit as tough to drive as its predecessors which neither Carlos Sainz or Daniel Ricciardo ever full mastered.

 

 

Norris pushed harder this year

Lando Norris though believes despite the machinery it is the driver who makes the difference and has praised his rookie team mate Oscar Piastri.

“He’s a lovely guy, down to earth, a normal guy, a hard worker. So it’s good fun. Different, I guess, to Daniel, I feel like a bit of a contrast of Australian, but still good fun.

“He’s very fast at the same time, so he’s probably been pushing me a little bit more than in the past couple years.”

Piastri has been roundly beaten by Norris in qualifying this year and the count after five races is 4-1 to the British driver. However, the average qualifying time difference is just 0.067 between the pair and Piastri has been classified within two places of Norris at the chequered flag each time he’s finished the race.

Marko has a problem with Schumacher

 

 

Piastri future world champion

Team boss Brown believes Piastri is a champion in the making.

“Oscar has been impressive since we’ve had him in the car. He’s very mature. He’s very focused and he’s very technical. So the combination of Lando and Oscar, I couldn’t think of a better combination of drivers,” Brown said.

“Oscar has done a fantastic job and he’s trading lap times with Lando now and that’s what you want.

“He’s not really made certainly not any big mistakes. Typical exploring the limits so the odd lock of a wheel here and there but yeah, he’s not been to all these races so early indications are we’ve got a future world champion on our hands.

“We just have to work to give him a faster car now.”

 

 

Car design philosophy hard to change

Whether McLaren can do this or not is yet to be seen. In a recent interview Aston Martin’s Dan Fallows claimed that teams will find it more and more difficult to change their car concept the longer they persist with their initial ideas formed for the big regulation changes in 2022.

Lando Norris doesn’t believe the arrival of Piastri has changed to much from his perspective not the dynamics within the team.

“How I worked last year and how I worked with Daniel, it’s not too different, it’s not like too many things change,” he said.

“They lean on me maybe a bit more for the knowledge of how we were in previous years to look at the development from last year to this year and things like that.

Ferrari understand Red Bull trick

 

McLaren poor showing in Miami

“Apart from that, you both give your sides of the feelings and the story of what’s going on with the car and what you want from the car, which aligns very well.

“I wouldn’t say we have the same driving style, but our comments and complaints are generally always the same. So I think that’s a good thing.”

McLaren were buoyed by their big upgrade package they brought to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix which saw both cars battling during the final session of qualifying. Norris finished in P9 with Piastri just two further back though the next weekend in Miami was to be night and day.

Neither driver made it out of Q1 in the Florida city race then during the race Norris was impeded by a first lap nudge from Alpha Taurus Nyck de Vries. The team later revealed this damage probably was worth 2-3 tenths of a second per lap and saw Norris trail home in P17.

 

 

Stella: “Reality check”

Piastri meanwhile was managing brake issues and could do no better than finish P19, a fair cry from the highs of Baku a week earlier.

“Our main takeaway from Miami is that we were not quick enough this weekend,” team principal Andrea Stella said.

“After scoring points in Baku, this weekend serves as a reality check on how much work we have ahead of us.

“The plan doesn’t change: we have good developments coming, we keep our heads down, regroup and go again.”

The team were hoping for extended running this weekend in Imola to iron out the issues experienced with the upgrade in Miami. Now they will be forced to muddle through at the outlier that is Monaco before they can resume the analysis of their car development at the well known Barcelona track.

READ MORE: Changes afoot this year in Monaco

MONACO, HERE WE GO!pic.twitter.com/eCIckdq6eE

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