Zak Brown says that proving to Lando Norris that McLaren is a team capable of winning the F1 world championship will be key to retaining the young Briton's services in the future.
Norris is contracted to McLaren until the end of 2025, but many pundits are predicting that any one of the sport's big teams – Red Bull, Mercedes or Ferrari – will make a move for the Briton at some point next season.
On the back of McLaren's spectacular gains this summer, which allowed Norris to score successive P2 podiums in Britain and in Hungary, the 23-year-old reiterated his long-term commitment to his team.
"I want to achieve my success and I want to achieve my goals with McLaren," he said in Spa. "That’s been my target since I’ve come here, since I’ve entered Formula 1 with this team.
"I guess I’m a loyal guy from that point of view, that I’ve joined the team, they gave me a chance in Formula 1 and I want to deliver and achieve success for them."
But Brown stressed the importance of supplying its young star with a car worthy of his remarkable talent. Therefore, McLaren's recent gains were significant in the context of keeping Norris happy.
"I think it’s been massively important for all of us. It shows we can do it," Brown told ESPN.
"That being said, we haven’t won one with [Norris] yet. He loves McLaren, it’s been his family, so there’s no doubt in my mind that his number one choice is to win a World Championship with McLaren.
"I think the best thing we can do to retain him is to demonstrate to him we’re a team capable of doing that.
"It’s not a case of wooing him or not wooing him, it’s about giving him a car where he can look himself in the mirror and say ‘I think I can win a World Championship with this team’."
McLaren started its 2023 campaign with a launch-spec car that lacked aero efficiency, which put the team on the back foot at the outset.
Norris didn't hold back his criticism of the team's MCL60, often highlighting the design's deficiencies such as its "terrible" handling in low-speed corners.
But Brown says that Norris' public dressing down at the time of team papaya's machine never instilled discouragement within the outfit's ranks.
"No, we're all motivated," he told Motorsport.com. "We kind of get happy together, we get grumpy together. So, if he's made a comment, it's consistent, it's motivating.
"We don't get down, we fight hard. I mean, if you look at how poor the start of the season was, that was hard.
"Meanwhile, underneath the surface we knew we were seeing great development in the wind tunnel, so it was like publicly taking a battering at the start of the year while knowing underneath things were actually going really well.
"And the team handled it really well, so we're motivated."
©McLaren
After several years of gestation, McLaren's new wind-tunnel is now up and running at Woking as are other important pieces of infrastructure that have been put in place to carry the team towards a prosperous future in F1.
"We’re in it now," Brown said regarding the wind tunnel. "Coming out of the summer break, we’re in it.
"We now have everything in place and just need some more time to mature. So the wind tunnel here, the simulators here, the manufacturing unit is open."
Revamping McLaren's facilities was a significant component of the team's development plans, with the other fundamental element being the restructuring of the team's engineering department.
Managed by team boss Andrea Stella, the changes will be completed at the end of the year when ex-Ferrari Head of Vehicle Concept David Sanchez and former Red Bull engineering chief Rob Marshall report for duty at Woking.
"We’ve got our team in place, it's stable," commented Brown. "We have additional talent coming to be additive to what we currently have. We have all the financial resources we need.
"It’s just going to take a little bit of time so as long as we can show this progress… ’26 is going to be a huge reset for this sport and there’s not going to be any excuses for us.
"We have everything we need from resources, people, two great drivers, all the technology, infrastructure.
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