MPH: Why Lando believes McLaren can battle Red Bull
F1
Only one team has made significant inroads into Red Bull's advantage this season and it's bringing another big upgrade to Singapore. If it lives up to its billing, the latest McLaren will close up on the championship leaders, says Mark Hughes
McLaren progress has given Norris more hope — and now a further leap is promised
Ahead of another major development step on his McLaren MCL60, Lando Norris sounds quite excited about his prospects for this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix.
Lando’s got an unusual persona, sunny and smiley but deeply cynical at the same time. His glass is invariably half-empty and that’s probably just part of the ambition pushing him forward – towards the goal of grand prix victories and fighting for world titles. There isn’t a single one of his peers who doesn’t believe he’s capable of that.
But because the timescale of a driver’s career can be very ill-matched with the competitive cycles of a team, it’s only natural that his loyalty to McLaren – a team which has improved in fits and starts since he joined as a rookie – has been stretched at times. He’s in his sixth season there now and 2023 did not start well. It was all very well the team telling him pre-season that the car was going to be off the pace but that they knew how to fix it and he’d have a much more competitive car in the second half of the season. But they are just words. Meanwhile the clock ticks.
Yet… the big redesign – with the sidepods lifted up around a re-packaged cooling system – did exactly what they’d said it would when it arrived in Austria. It gave him something with which he could fight, which didn’t fade dramatically in the race after he’d qualified it higher than it merited. A front row at Silverstone, even leading there for a couple of laps, a strong second there and another in Hungary. Now, after the low-drag demands of Spa and Monza (to which it was ill-suited), we’re back to downforce tracks where it should shine. Better yet, there’s an upgrade which simulation says should be an even bigger step than Austria’s.
Norris leads at the start of the British GP
Getty Images
He’s got reason to believe. “[Before Austria] sometimes we would put stuff on and it’s not really delivered to what we wanted or what it should have done. But definitely after Austria and how much we kind of progressed since then, it gives me more hope.”
The cynical realism is still there, but you can almost feel the ambition. “No matter what we try we are bad in one area and I think those things let us down in quite a few races. And even at some places we go to, we’re extremely competitive on 90% of the track, it’s just certain things which then make us look bad. If we didn’t have some of these bad things, we would be very strong and a lot more competitive and competing for podiums.
“If we can fix a little bit of this slow-speed, if I can get a bit more what I believe the car needs to take that next step — a bit of it is what we hopefully will have this weekend, then a bit of it will be what I want from a driving style point of view — that’s when I’m confident we can take the fight to the majority of the teams. Including Red Bull.”
The Singapore Grand Prix is the first stop on F1's intercontinental trip through Asia and the Americas as the 2023 season winds to a close — Max Verstappen's third world…
By
Cambridge Kisby
Including Red Bull? That’s a bold claim indeed. But if this step is as big as that in Austria, it would put him at least within sniffing distance and a clear best of the rest. What’s puzzling is that the Austria-onwards gains have come so unambiguously. It seems no matter what Mercedes or Ferrari do, Red Bull remain as far away as ever. They have their good and bad tracks, their strengths and weaknesses but the shortfall doesn’t change. On the other hand, McLaren — a team fighting with AlphaTauri and Alfa Romeo early season — has made gains which are spectacular.
Which possibly suggests that the Ferrari and Mercedes have flat-lined in their potential. The aero philosophies of both those cars is quite different to that of Red Bull’s. Is it that which has made them so vulnerable in the competitive pecking order to a McLaren which has been heavily developed toward Red Bull?
“Obviously, we’ve not run it on the track yet,” said Norris yesterday, “and so we don’t want to say too much until we’ve actually got it to work properly but it’s a good step.”
