F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Brown: Closing gap to top three is McLaren's 2023 aim

McLaren CEO Zak Brown says that his team is focussing on closing the gap to the top three teams in the Formula 1 constructors championship next season and stopping their recent downward slide in the standings.

McLaren was third in 2020, a season which saw a particularly poor performance from Ferrari. The following season they dropped to fourth, and in 2022 they were also pipped by Alpine by 14 points.

That left them in fifth overall, a long way from where McLaren wants to be. Dismissing the challenge from Alpine, Brown said that the target for this season would be to catch up to Mercedes and cutting the gap to the top-placed teams.

That's a big target: between them, McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo took 159 points last year, while Mercedes - despite having a terrible season by their standards - were on 515 points.

The gap between McLaren and 2022 champions Red Bull was even greater, a whopping 600 points after Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez clinched 17 Grand Prix wins over the course of the campaign.

Appearing on Australian motorsport news website Speedcafe.com's KTM Summer Grill just before Christmas, Brown confirmed that McLaren's first objective in 2023 would be "closing the gap to the front of the field."

“We kind of have two data points that we pay most attention to," he continued. "One is, how close are we to the team that’s winning?

“If that team is not Mercedes, our other data point – given what a great team Mercedes is, and we share the same engine – is how close are we to Mercedes?

“So those are our two primary data points from a competitive standpoint, and we want to be closer to them [tis year] than we were [in 2022].

“Beyond that it’s hard to set a very specific number to that," he acknowledged. “Of course, we’d like to get back up to at least fourth in the championship.

"But I think we’re going to need a little bit more of our technology in place to really be able to break into the top three," he admitted.

One of the advantages enjoyed by their rival teams was having both drivers working effectively together to contribute to the overall team points tally.

That was notably not the case at McLaren. Norris contributed 122 points to the pot and finished in P7 in the drivers championship, while Ricciardo had a wretched time and pulled in just 37 points over the course of 22 races.

Brown continued to call Ricciardo's failure to thrive during a two-year stint at Woking "a great mystery".

“We’ve certainly analysed it. We gave it everything we’ve got, Daniel gave it everything he’s got and our relationship with Daniel was great.

“It was clearly disappointing for both of us as to the outcome but I think it’s a bit of a great mystery as to why. I don’t think Daniel knows, we don’t know, we tried everything. Maybe we worked too hard.

“I think ultimately that’s why we both decided to make a change because we had tried everything and we really didn’t know why it wasn’t clicking."

As a result, Brown took the decision to negotiate an early end to Ricciardo's contract with the team, and replaced him with former Formula 2 champion Oscar Piastri for 2023, while Ricciardo will return to Red Bull as a third driver.

"Hopefully a change of environment for him [means] he’ll get his magic back because for sure he’s a magical guy," Brown said. "But we needed to make a change because we couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong.

The team will also have to contend with a change of team principal, with Andreas Seidl having moved to take up the reins of the Sauber operation that currently runs the Alfa Romeo entry on the F1 grid.

Seidl's place at the held of the McLaren team will be taken by Andrea Stella who had previously worked under Seidl as executive director (racing).

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.

Recent Posts

Alpine double-podium in Brazil could deliver $30 million windfall

Alpine’s remarkable double podium at the São Paulo Grand Prix with Esteban Ocon and Pierre…

10 hours ago

F1i's Driver Ratings for the 2024 São Paulo GP

Alexander Albon, Williams (Did Not Start): 5.5/10 Alex Albon is definitely going through something of…

11 hours ago

Jos Verstappen rips British media after Brazilian Max fest

Jos Verstappen wasted no time after his son spectacular win at the São Paulo Grand…

13 hours ago

Leclerc left with ‘mixed feelings’ after disappointing Sao Paulo GP

Charles Leclerc's weekend in Sao Paulo was unfortunately a stark contrast to Ferrari's recent triumphs…

14 hours ago

Back when Kimi knew exactly what he was doing

Twelve years ago on this day, Kimi Raikkonen took a popular win at the 2012…

16 hours ago

Mercedes fined for starting grid tyre pressure infringement

The Mercedes team was hit with a fine by the FIA after Sunday’s Sao Paulo…

17 hours ago