McLaren are the Formula One team turnaround story of the decade.  Having scored just seventeen points after eight rounds in 2023, they brought an upgraded car to the Red Bull Ring which saw Lando Norris almost double their points in one outing.

For the remainder of the year Norris outscored every other driver besides Max Verstappen and the team outscored both Mercedes and Ferrari having been lurking in the lower reaches of the constructors’ table.

Andreas Stella claimed their car for 2024 would be an evolution, rather than revolution as the dream built on the strengths of the core design from the Austria upgrade.

 

 

 

Ferrari bright start to 2024

Over the first four rounds this season, Ferrari stole a march on the team from Woking racking up five podiums including a race win in Australia for Carlos Sainz, while the papaya cars claimed just a P3 for Lando Norris down under.

Heading for the new sprint time racer in Japan, McLaren were 55 points behind the Scuderia and despite a maiden win in Monaco for Charles Leclerc where his team mate came home third, McLaren have closed dow this lead and its stands at just 7 points heading to Hungary next weekend.

Lando Norris of course won in Miami as a result of running long and catching a convenient safety car. Then in changeable conditions in Canada, Norris tool the lead of the race while others pitted for wet weather tyres. After one lap remaining out, Lando had the gap to stop, fit the rain tyres and come out in the lead but remarkably the team sent him around again.

Then the rains came harder and Norris skated his way back to the pits over the final third of the circuit on the Ilse de Notre Dame. While Lando held on for second place, the strategy call definitely cost him the lead and a likely win as well.

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McLaren errors and dithering

Last time out in Silverstone, once again McLaren were undercut by Mercedes and dithered over which tyre to fit to Norris car for the final stint. They had a brand new medium tyre available but chose to copy Lewis Hamilton and fit the red walled soft tyre.

This proved costly as Verstappen on the harder tyre, hunted down the McLaren driver over the closing laps of the race, easily taking P2 as Norris’ tyres began to degrade.

In the same race when the rains came, the McLaren cars were running line astern on track. Yet instead of double stacking them to fit the rain tyre, the team chose to send Oscar Piastri around again, which proved costly for the Australian.

Without these errors, McLaren would now have overtaken Ferrari, whose big car upgrade in Barcelona has proved to be slower than the SF-24’s previous iteration. Without considering the crash in Austria, McLaren should have at least nine more points and be second in the constructors’ championship.

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McLaren admit wrong tyre call for Norris

The team has been heavily criticised for its poor race track procedures and team boss Andreas Stella admits the team should have made the call for Norris to use the medium tyre given Verstappen proved the harder compounds had pace towards the end of the British GP.

“In those conditions, we wanted to check also with Lando, what his preference was, what you should be going after,” Stella told media at the British Grand Prix. Yet he admitted they didn’t question their driver how he thought the tyre would be towards the end of the race.

Lando was focused on Hamilton, but the team had visibility as to what Verstappen was doing.

“I think this one was a decision that […] we should have taken,” Stella later admitted.

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A wholistic review

Facing heavy criticism in the media, the Andreas Stella now defends the team’s approach to resolving the issues. Calls have been made for a wholesale restructure of the track side operations of McLaren F1, but Stella refutes this explaining how in fact they will conduct the review.

“You see how the decision was made, you see what information we brought to the table, was this information used in the best possible way or not, what were the contributions from the various people.

“I think that’s the way you manage complex processes and when I say complex, it’s not only complex because it’s a difficult decision, but because it involves many people and you need to make sure as well that when you review that it’s good learning for everyone involved.”

“It wouldn’t help very much that I learned something, the race engineer learned something, we don’t learn all this as a group so I think responsibility of the people, we go after this like we always do, review, learn and we go again.”

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Stella backs his people

For example, somebody would have delivered the information suggesting it was better not to double stack with Piastri. The data available at the time will be reviewed and the process for the false conclusion which ensued re-checked.

Yet Stella refuses to criticise the team and likens the mistakes made at track side to the state of the technical decision when he tool over the team in January 2023. He points to how in under five months his new leadership and the staff back at the MTC were able to turnaround a car which had scored just 17 points.

“The reason why we were able to bring out a car twelve months ago that was much faster than the car before Austria was the people who work at McLaren,” he said. “The 1,000 employees at McLaren achieved this.”

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Ferrari man jealous of McLaren progress

The McLaren boss explains how when he was at Ferrari, he was jealous of the way McLaren were working to be successful. Many of the same people are still today in situ and Stella claims they are the reason he took the job of running the McLaren F1 team.

“I knew the people at McLaren and I knew exactly what talent lay dormant in this team. When I looked at some of my colleagues in the aero department, I thought to myself: ‘Hey, these are the same people who turned a disastrous car at the start of the season into the fastest car at the end of the season in 2009.’ 

“And 2010 and 2011 were a seamless continuation of that. I was at Ferrari at the time and I often asked myself: ‘How do they do it?’

“The talent was clearly already there. So for me the most important thing was to work well with Zak and with the other leaders on the team.“

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Hungary happy hunting for McLaren

Stella will examine the processes which led to the faulty decisions which have cost McLaren F1 further race wins this year. With a car described as the fastest on the grid since Canada, the team will bounce back and challenge for more top steps of the podium as the second Half of the year unfolds.

McLaren went well at the Hungaroring last year, which surprised Lando Norris given the corners are predominantly medium to fast. At the time their car struggled with traction in the slower turns, yet Norris claimed a respectable P2 behind the winner Max Verstappen.

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Insider leak on Audi F1 disaster

Insider: Audi corporate interference ruining F1 project – For those less familiar with Formula One from the outside it appears the Andretti Organisation has a more positive plan for a future in the sport than German auto manufacturing giant Audi. Rumours have persisted the Audi new powertrain for 2026 is well behind schedule and Sauber who will build the car are the slowest on the current grid.

Andreas Seidl left his position as the team principal of McLaren and was appointed CEO of Sauber which was upgraded this season to CEO of Audi F1. The German engineer has had success in Germany’s touring car series and more latterly as head of the Porsche LMP1 project.

He won world championship titles with Porsche in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) between 2015 and 2017, including three overall victories in the prestigious Le Mans 24 Hours… READ MORE