McLaren is targeting a top four finish in the Formula One constructors’ championship this year, but says it could take a few races before the full potential of its new car is released.
The new MCL60 — which breaks McLaren’s naming convention of recent years to mark 60 years since Bruce McLaren founded the team — was launched at the team’s UK factory in Woking on Monday.
The new car appears to be an evolution of last year’s McLaren MCL36, which secured fifth place in the 2022 standings behind rivals Alpine.
Lando Norris will race at the team for a fifth season alongside rookie teammate Oscar Piastri, who replaces fellow Australian Daniel Ricciardo.
New team principal Andrea Stella is hopeful McLaren will move up the order by at least one place this year, but warned that some of the car’s potential would not be unlocked until upgrades later in the season.
“I think it’s fair to say that over the course of the season we would like to establish ourselves as part of the top four,” Stella said. “We know realistically with the top three teams, this may mean potentially being the fourth best car over the course of the season.
“We are realistic in the very short term, there’s good developments already in the pipeline that should land trackside very soon in the season and should allow us to take a decent step forward.
“We are not naive, we know that pretty much every team will be saying the same, ‘we have good developments’ and so on. Like I said, we also have more high level developments going on in the team.”
Stella explained that some areas of development weren’t uncovered early enough to make it to the launch car but would offer a step forward with an upgrade package after the first four rounds.
“I think while we are happy with the development of the car in most of the areas, there is some areas which we realised a little late into the development some really strong directions,” he said.
“So, not necessarily we will be able to capitalise these directions in the very short term, and that’s why I also talk about the developments coming just after the start of the season.
“So in this sense, I just invoke realism. In a way, it’s more relative to ourselves but it’s such a competitive game that I would be surprised…
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