McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown’s rebuilding of the team following his arrival at the end of 2016 hit a couple of significant snags last year.
It began promisingly, yielding third place in the 2020 world championship, the team’s best result for eight years. The following season McLaren finally returned to the top step of the podium at Monza.
That was achieved with a car which had been converted to use a Mercedes engine in place of a Renault. So with a reset of the technical regulations coming for 2022, and the technical team having the opportunity to integrate their power unit in a ground-up design, better things were expected.
They did not materialise. The team fell to fifth in the championship standings, scored not much more than half its 2021 points tally, and mustered just a single podium appearance, at Imola. Though to their credit, they were the only other than Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes to achieve a top-three finish.
McLaren’s problems were twofold. First, Daniel Ricciardo‘s troubled start to life at the team – that Monza triumph notwithstanding – not only continued into last season, but worsened. The team eventually resorted to cutting his three-year deal short by a season instead of running him again in 2023 as planned.
Moreover, the MCL36 was beset by problems. Brake cooling woes thwarted them at the start of the season, but even once these were sorted McLaren never enjoyed the kind of pace which allowed them to trouble the front-runners during 2021.
A further complication unfolded over the course of the season. Brown decided against pursuing a power unit supply deal with Audi, unwilling to sell up. However he couldn’t prevented their arrival having an impact on his team: Soon after Audi agreed a deal with Sauber, they made a swoop for the man who had impressed many with his successful implementation of Brown’s vision for the team: Andreas Seidl.
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As has been widely observed, Brown’s next concern must be that another team member who has contributed much to their recent gains will follow him: Lando Norris, who single-handedly scored enough points to assure McLaren’s fifth place in the championship last year, raking in well over three times as many as Ricciardo.
Norris is entering his fifth season as an F1 driver, all of which have been at McLaren. Last year he signed a new…
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