McLaren renaissance 'built on 2022 French GP disappointment'

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McLaren CEO Zak Brown says that the team learned from a difficult time in 2022, which proved crucial in laying the ground for its resurgent success in 2023.

"The big moment was the 2022 French Grand Prix when we were late with our upgrades and they were ineffective,” Brown told the latest edition of Autosport magazine.

“The reaction from the leadership was not the reaction I would have expected," he continued, adding that it was also at this crucial point of the season where work was underway on the 2023 car, the MCL60.

"That was the big moment for me, and obviously we made the changes at the end of the year," he said, alluding to the departure of technical director James Key, and team boss Andreas Seidl moving to Audi.

“I asked Andrea Stella to take a look at what is going on and he rang the bell saying: ‘let’s change this, change some people, hire some people,’" Brown explained.

Read also: Brown not dismissing ‘unpleasant surprise’ from Red Bull

The changes meant that McLaren started behind the curve in 2023, but upgrades arriving from Austria onwards soon turned things around and propelled the team past their midfield rivals and onto the podium.

"We knew that we weren’t going to be strong immediately," Brown admitted. "I think it would’ve been a worse situation if we thought we were going to be strong and we weren’t, and we’d be scratching our heads.

'At least our data has been accurate," he said. "What that told me was that we knew where we were. We just weren’t where we wanted to be, as opposed to putting stuff on the car and saying: ‘This is going to be good’, and then it is not.

“We were confident, but until you put it on the car and it works [you can never tell for sure],” Brown added.

Lando Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri took advantage of the rapidly improving MCL60 to claim a combined nine podiums, and help the side climb to fourth place in the final constructors' championship standings.

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McLaren, Zak Brown

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.