Zak Brown would’ve been “ashamed” if McLaren had lost the Constructors’ title to the “most iconic team” Ferrari in the F1 2024 season.
McLaren made their mark last year as the most improved team in the championship, their in-season gains putting Lando Norris in with a shout at winning the World title.
Although the Woking team finished a moment in qualifying at the season’s Bahrain Grand Prix and finished the race of forty-five moments, race winner Max Verstappen’s update to the Miami Grand Prix sparked a resurgence.
Attracting a new land in the MCL38, the team was systematically made to other car spaces, which meant the correlation disorders hindered, in Red Bull specific, McLaren had a forged base on which to build.
And build on it they did.
👉 F1 2024: Head qualification record between teammates
👉 F1 2024: face to face career among teammates
The team won six Gins Grands concerts to win the Ferrari Front Global Championship, while Norris finished a P2 in his career in the pilots.
It was such a close case and yet, until now.
While McLaren drills in the merit of Red Bull on the track, the team probably aligned the fastest car of the network during part of the season, were defeated through the errors of the pilots and strategists.
This meant that even when Norris closed in less than 44 problems of Verstappen, Red Bull’s force only needed a better career to trust the title. He learned that in a Brazilian general practitioner soaked in the rain, because the red flags, the strategy and consecutive errors of the motor force charge Norris.
But although McLaren lost the individual trophy, they were keen to earn the name of the first constructors since 1998.
The Woking-based team took Red Bull’s lead into the Azerbaijan Grand Prix with the 2023 champions losing opposite to Ferrari Three Race later in Mexico.
Ferrari moved away from McLaren and entered the end of the season that followed them through 21 problems with everything to play.
“We were the slowest team,” Brown told CNBC. “To have that type of turnaround was awesome.
“It’s a lot more laughing to be the hunter, and then we hunt the moment in the season, so you get a little . . . you’d be embarrassed to have gone through all this, run the championship and then Péralo in the last race.
“I am also motivated through the concern of the defeat that I am motivated through the emotion of victory, so it is very stressful.
“I would not have sought to be one of the mechanisms that avoid the stands. I mean, the tension that would have been under you, about 16. 18 other people to prevent, and you are not as fast as your most slow user in this situation.
“And making them look and prevent the fastest position in the race was a great story.
“Ferrari, if there’s one team you want to go down to the wire with – the most iconic team in Formula 1 with the long history between Ferrari and McLaren. I like racing Ferrari,” Brown said. “I like Charles Leclerc, I like Fred who runs the team.”
This is the friendship between Brown and the director of the Ferrari team, Fred Vasseur, that the latter joined Norris’s celebrations in Miami Grand Prix with McLaren, who later separated from Ferrari’s moments.
“This is what was good, we’ve gone into a memory. . . Fred when Lando won Miami one way at our birthday party. And this genre sparked a moment when we went up to each other’s birthday party during the season,” Brown said.
“I think it’s the big aspect of the sport. I wouldn’t say we do this with all of our competitors. We have relationships on the way to the stands. But therefore it was wonderful that we could make it so sporty, and I hope we can do that this year.
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