McLaren boss Zak Brown says the F1 outfit fell short of its development goals for its 2023 car, which puts a cloud of uncertainty over team papaya's ranking in the pecking order at the start of the season.
McLaren F1 chief Andrea Stella acknowledged at the MCL60's launch that he wasn't entirely happy with the car's first specification and that updates were already in the pipeline to improve the new machine's competitiveness as soon as possible.
On Friday, Brown confirmed that, just a week away from the start of its 2023 campaign, McLaren's challenger is not where the team hoped it would be in terms of its development.
"We know we set some goals for development which we didn’t hit and we felt it was better to be honest about that," Brown told the media in Bahrain.
"We, like everyone, have a lot of development coming, so we are encouraged [by] what we see around the corner.
"But I think we will be going into the the first race off of our projected targets and it’s hard to really know where that means we’ll be on the grid."
The Woking-based outfit concluded its first day of running at Sakhir with the lowest mileage of all teams as its crews dealt with "teething problems", as described by Brown.
"We had Oscar doing most of the heavy lifting in the morning, getting the car dialed in," he explained. "Nothing alarming, just the usual testing bugs.
"Today, Lando was focussed on longer runs, so we’re still understanding the car and have a lot more testing ahead of us – relatively speaking, another day and a half – and then we’ll get to work on race set-up."
Brown stressed the importance of enjoying a drama-free few sessions and avoiding the problems that significantly set back the team last year.
"Last year with our brake issue it stopped the development of some other items we were working on to make sure we fixed the problem," he said.
"Then we came into Bahrain sub-optimal from a performance standpoint, just to make sure we got through the race.
"I’m very proud about how quickly the team did react because we had about a week to solve a problem. But I think that did hurt us at the start of the year so it’s important that we have a normal test session to start the season."
McLaren's projected slow start to its new season hasn't eroded Brown's ambition of seeing his team fight for a spot among the top four at the end of the year.
But the American admits that it will need to quickly "pick up the pace".
"We want to be in the top four by the end of the year. Last year was a bit disappointing," said Brown. "Our aspirations are to get back to the front. We know that will take a little bit more time.
"We’ve got all the technology infrastructure either in or going to be pretty much completed this year. So that’s quite exciting, and we have some good developments coming.
"But so does every other single team in Formula 1. So we need do need to pick up the pace."
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