“Not entirely happy,” New McLaren boss makes disheartening statement on their 2023 F1 challenger

Zak Brown earlier said McLaren aspire to challenge at the front in 2025. But Andrea Stella's statement on the 2023 MCL60 isn't a good sign on this front.

“Not entirely happy,” New McLaren boss makes disheartening statement on their 2023 F1 challenger

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella

Many felt that 2022 was a step back for McLaren. From competing for P3 with Ferrari in 2021, they were left competing for P4 with Alpine. And for vast of the majority of the races, they were not competitive with the top three at all. But that was the case for every team apart from the top three as well. But they are an incredibly storied and popular racing team – the midfield is definitely not where they want to be. 2023 is the first of many years on a path to competitiveness.

Competitiveness, and hopefully championship wins. Zak Brown, their CEO, has earlier set a ‘deadline’ to be competing at the front by 2025. That’ll be the final year before the next cycle of regulation changes. The 2026 engines will feature 100% sustainable fuel and more electrical components than ever before. Whatever the regulations, 2023 is high time for McLaren to at least be challenging the ‘big’ teams on occasion.

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They’ve just recently launched their 2023 challenger. But their new team principal, Andrea Stella, admits that the team aren’t ‘entirely happy’ with their car. That’s certainly not a good sign. As per Motorsport.com, he said: “Assessing our performance last year and looking at comparing those, we identified multiple areas of opportunities. The good news is that pretty much all of them have been addressed.” and added that these areas are predominantly to do with aerodynamics.

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Apart from the aerodynamics, there were also areas to do with ‘interaction with the tires’ that they worked on. Apart from that, Stella added: “There’s some other areas of the car that will be improved by developments in the early stage of the season. So we are happy, not entirely happy for what is the launch car, but optimistic that we should take a good step soon.”

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Andrea Stella would be surprised if McLaren are ‘there’ immediately

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella

While Andrea Stella says that the team aren’t ‘entirely happy’ with the MCL60, dubbed so because of McLaren’s 60th anniversary, he also is not sure of how the car will perform relative to the other teams. It’s hard to know that until you see the data from other teams as well, or until the cars go into action side-by-side. Which will take a will. An inkling will be provided at the pre-season testing in Bahrain, from February 23 to 25.

Stella further explained that the team realized some areas and ‘really strong directions’ too late. He said: “Like I said before, I think while we are happy with the development of the car in most of the areas, there’s some areas in which we kind of realised a little late in development, some really strong directions. So not necessarily we have been able to capitalise on this direction in the very short term.”

The Italian also stated that he would be surprised if McLaren are ‘there immediately’. He also feels that teams have to be ‘completely happy’ and ‘totally at the top’ of the maximum they can do in order to achieve their targets. But this is not the case for McLaren, which is obviously not a good sign. To recover from this, they’ll have to be completely on their game with development. Stella says their first development package ‘may’ arrive in race four, which is the Azerbaijan GP.

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