Until a decade ago, when McLaren’s most recognizable face was that of Ron Dennis, the idea that took hold in the collective imagination was that there was no team in Formula 1 that revitalized its cars more and better over the course of the season than that from Woking. This belief remained in force until shortly after Lewis Hamilton’s first coronation in 2008, when the last driver’s title on display at the Technology Center, the team’s iconic headquarters, was sold to the American company Global Net Lease (GNT) in mid-2021. for around 197 million euros. Then Red Bull appeared – four doubles between 2009 and 2013 – and Mercedes – another seven, between 2014 and 2020, already in the hybrid era – which imposed a paradigm shift and forced McLaren to look for an alternative to not depend on Mercedes as an engine supplier and sees the German manufacturer as a direct competitor.
The turnaround through the alliance with Honda (2015) marked the low point of the British structure, which ended this year in penultimate place in the statistics reserved for manufacturers. It was at Suzuka that Fernando Alonso famously expressed his frustration: “That’s a GP2 engine!” And it was at the Japanese track eight years later that McLaren confirmed the huge progress it had made in 2023. Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris finished second and third in qualifying this Saturday, half a second and six tenths behind Max Verstappen’s pole, which restored the status quo after the incident a few days ago in Singapore. Checo Pérez was fifth, Carlos Sainz was sixth and Fernando Alonso was tenth.
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No team has improved as much as McLaren since the first stop on the calendar. In 15 races, the lead of the first of his cars over the pole sitter was drastically and very progressively reduced. At the opening event in Bahrain, Norris was 1.6 seconds behind Verstappen. In Baku, the fourth test, the difference was nine tenths, only to be reduced to half a second in the seventh, in Montmeló. A month later, at Silverstone, Norris started from the front row after finishing the final qualifying lap (Q3) just two tenths behind Mad Max. Last week, the second place that the Somerset driver defended against the pressure of the Mercedes at the Marina Bay circuit confirmed the progress made by the British troops on the back of last year’s reorganization of the technical organization chart.
The departure of James Key as McLaren design boss motivated Zak Brown, the director, to shake up the Papaya single-seater hierarchy, as he was particularly unhappy with the pace of optimization of the car during the ongoing championship. Instead of a single visible head, the executive created a tricephaly that is still not fully trained. The division takes place between the aerodynamics, performance and technology departments. In the first case, Peter Prodromou was named, an eminence who worked with Adrian Newey for many years; while in January 2024 David Sánchez will join to lead the second (Performance) after his departure from Ferrari was confirmed a few months ago. When Brown heard about the possibility of winning another important part of Red Bull, he went looking for Rob Marshall, head of design and one of Newey’s confidants, who will be responsible for the technical area, that is, where the ideas begin Take shape. The three will report to Andrea Stella, an illustrious member of the paddock with a very long career that has gone hand in hand at Ferrari with monsters like Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso. “Although we couldn’t focus on a single technical director, it was necessary to select someone to take the lead. “Andrea is the ideal person for this position because of her character,” emphasizes Brown in an interview with Autosport. One of those guys that Americans like so much and is known more for his work than his words.
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