McLaren currently sits in third place in the 2024 constructors' standings – 55 points ahead and two places higher than at the same stage a year ago – and precedes Mercedes and Aston Martin in the close battle behind Red Bull and Ferrari.
While this is a notable improvement on the previous year, Ferrari has established itself as Red Bull's closest rival so far this season, a position that McLaren was likely to enjoy in the second part of 2023.
The great development work done by Ferrari during the winter helped the Ferrari men to get the better of McLaren even on a fast track like Suzuka, where two weeks ago Lando Norris qualified third, but was then overtaken in the race by both Reds, seeing the podium slip away behind those of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez.
After Suzuka, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella told the “F1 Nation” podcast that he believes his team can still “think about winning races this year” if it can replicate the impressive development work carried out in 2023.
When asked to comment on Stella's words at this weekend's Chinese Grand Prix press conference, Norris joked that this won't happen in the short term.
“Not anytime soon, that's for sure!” he said before having a good laugh. But then she added: “I think we can do it in the right place and at the right time, if we improve the car as we need to.”
“Honestly, I wasn't too frustrated in Suzuka,” he continued. “Everything went pretty much as we expected. I don't think we did a perfect job and we probably had the potential to finish one place further.”
“Throughout the season we have occupied the same position, behind Red Bull and Ferrari, and in the race we have always been a little ahead of the others. And that's exactly how it went last weekend. So I don't think that there were too many frustrations.”
“But we know our problems, we know what we need to improve and if we manage to do it, I think Andrea is right: this year we can win races and we can be competitive with the other two teams that are not ahead of us.”
“But that's an 'if' and we need to work hard to improve the car in some areas, which have been the big challenge for us in recent years. But if we succeed, I'm sure we can have some good races.”
McLaren will bring its first major update to the MCL38 at the next round in Miami, and potentially two more big packages over the course of the season.
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