An uphill start
This year’s world championship began with the big news on home soil McLaren of Team Principal Andrea Stella and Oscar Piastri, a promising Australian rookie who took over from his compatriot Daniel Ricciardo. However, judging by the results of the first races of the season, the level of competitiveness of the Woking team seemed to reserve another world championship like the previous ones, once again hindered by numerous difficulties that pushed the historic British team away from the fight with the top teams. The testimony was all in the various placings outside the points zone and a 6th place by Lando Norris in Melbourne as the best result, but all this until the arrival of the Austrian Grand Prix.
The McLaren rebirth
At the beginning of July, the two MCL60s showed up in Spielberg with some technical updates initially passed into the background, instead proving to be the turning point of the season. With Norris’ 2nd place in the race and Piastri’s 4th, the British manufacturer began a period of applause-worthy performances that continued from that moment until the end of the championship, with a total of nine podiums, three fastest laps in the race and a pole position in the Sprint Shootoutwith annex victory in the Sprint in Qatar. A series of performances which, combined with numerous top-10 placings, allowed McLaren to finish even at 4th place in the 2023 Constructors’ ranking.
Norris’s enthusiasm
A rebirth praised by many fans and competitors of the ‘Papaya’, as well as by Norris himself. The British #4 congratulated his team in a meeting with the media, underlining his particular ability to achieve great improvements despite some regulatory limitations: “I am emotionally proud of the entire team, who made such an important turnaround – he has declared – it was one of the biggest transformations of the last 10 yearsin a time when it is more difficult than ever to transform a car due to wind tunnel times, costs and all these things. At the start it was hard, because I thought it would be like this for a whole year. We didn’t know how much we would improve, especially in the beginning. We said to ourselves: “We remain patient and know that there are decent things coming.” But in recent years, when decent things have arrived, they haven’t always turned out to be much of an improvement. This year it was the opposite and it turned out to be a progress almost greater than we expected. The fact remains that it was hard, because you never want to start the season thinking: ‘Wow, 24 races to go and I can’t even get out of Q1’.”
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