McLaren’s 2023 assessment: The unexpected comeback

If one had to find a totem animal for McLaren to summarize its 2023 season, it would undoubtedly be a caterpillar transformed into a butterfly. The Woking team crawled during almost the first half of the season, a terrible sporting disappointment, even if the 2022 season was not particularly brilliant. Before truly taking off and redeeming itself beautifully in the second half of the year. Let’s decode it.

Performance of the race car in 2023

With a double zero score in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the start of the season was a big blow to McLaren. The team could only bring back 17 meager points in the first eight races of the season. It was simply one of McLaren’s worst starts in its long history in F1. One of the main factors was a rule change by the FIA regarding the height of the floor, which had a bigger impact on the car’s performance than anticipated. It’s also worth noting the change in leadership compared to last season: Andreas Seidl left to see if the grass was greener at Sauber, and Andrea Stella took over the reins of the team. These repeated failures even fueled rumors about Lando Norris potentially leaving for Ferrari or Red Bull in the future.

In April, the team acknowledged that they had completely misunderstood their conceptual approach and were considering starting from scratch with the car for the next season. And then, the miracle happened in Austria, along with the magic of someone who used to be among the greatest: a significant – vital, even – package of improvements was introduced at the Red Bull Ring, which radically enhanced the performance of the MCL60. An additional upgrade in Singapore even propelled the car to the position of the second best team in terms of pure performance, just behind Red Bull. The collaboration between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri resulted in nine podium finishes, with the Australian even winning the Sprint race in Qatar.

In the end, the team finished fourth in the Constructors’ Championship, with Lando Norris scoring the highest number of points, excluding Red Bull drivers, if we only consider the races from Singapore to Abu Dhabi. Some teams consistently fail to bring significant improvements to their cars, or even regress (hello Haas and Aston Martin). Therefore, we salute even more the meticulous work carried out by the engineers and mechanics to make this wreck highly competitive.

MCL60 Reliability

Like Ferrari with Charles Leclerc and Alpine with Esteban Ocon, McLaren started the season in the worst possible way: with a retirement, in Bahrain, for Oscar Piastri. This was due to a technical problem with the steering column after the replacement of his steering wheel. Throughout the season, the Australian driver accumulated 3 DNFs. The second one occurred in Belgium after a collision with Carlos Sainz, and the third one in Austin, after a crash with Esteban Ocon. On the other hand, Lando Norris only had one retirement, in Las Vegas, after crashing into the barriers. Overall, there was only one DNF due to the reliability of the MLC60. Thus, we have seen worse reliability issues, and McLaren deserves a good rating.

Optimizing the strategy at McLaren

If we could give McLaren a 10/10 here, we would (but we’re not in a classroom). The British team is the one that has made the most progress throughout the season, with a trajectory opposite to that of Aston Martin, which had started off strong before fizzling out. Lando Norris finished in 17th place (!) on four occasions in the first half of the year. And then, from 13th place in Canada, he climbed to 4th in Austria, and 2nd in Silverstone and Hungary. He only dropped out of the top 10 due to retirement in Las Vegas, after a collision with the safety barrier. This kind of improvement is almost miraculous.

Oscar Piastri has nothing to be ashamed of either: he was a regular in the lower half of the field until the British Grand Prix, where he finished 4th, and then 5th in Hungary. A “glow up” like this thanks to the improvements made to the MCL60, deserves more than just an honorable mention. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger: McLaren has demonstrated it well this year by rolling up its sleeves and learning from its mistakes.

Duel of teammates at McLaren

Qualifications: Norris 15 – 7 Piastri

Courses: Norris 17 – 5 Piastri

Lando Norris far surpassed his teammate in all areas this season, except for the sprint race in the Qatar Grand Prix won by Oscar Piastri. In the end, the Briton finished the season with more than double the points (205 points) compared to his teammate (97 points), and with 7 podiums compared to Piastri’s 2. But let’s remember that Piastri was still just a rookie this season. And what a rookie he is! The Australian is confident, hard on himself, and sets his expectations very high. He never gives up and even seemed terribly disappointed when victory slipped away from him in Qatar – what a weekend for the number 81. Many claim that they haven’t seen such a good rookie since Lewis Hamilton or Fernando Alonso.

In the general standings, Oscar Piastri is in 9th position, three places behind Lando Norris, who is in 6th. But the comparison would have been much worse for the Australian if his teammate had been able to recover two more points: he would then be 4th, just ahead of Fernando Alonso and his 206 points. One cannot help but admire once again this incredible comeback by the British driver. He only needed one more victory to conclude this season in style. Maybe it will finally come in 2024…