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McLaren boss Andrea Stella has challenged Lando Norris to be “more consistent” this season as he believes the Woking driver will once again be at the front of the pack.
McLaren were the surprise package of 2023, delivering a massive step in performance midseason. From Austria onwards, only Red Bull’s triple world champion Max Verstappen won more points than Norris.
Stella, though, said the 24 year-old Briton still had plenty of room for improvement.
Norris, who is famously hard on himself, made a number of errors over the course of the year with Stella challenging him to match Verstappen’s metronomic consistency if he wants to take the next step in his career.
“Last year was definitely a smart season for Lando,” said the Italian after presenting the livery of the McLaren 2024 car. “If we look at the numbers, from Austria, I think Lando was Max’s most sensible scoring moment. That’s how it reflects his quality and what he is capable of doing as a Formula 1 driver, which places him at the front of the grid.
“At the same time, there are opportunities. We’ve had some setbacks, like the [drop] in qualifying in Saudi Arabia, which came a little bit out of nowhere.
“I think when you’re dealing with champions, at such a high level . . . You have to be on top. That’s what makes the difference.
“It’s not the most productive potential. It is, especially for Lando, almost unexplored in terms of quality. Sometimes he surprises us with some of the performances he can perform. Let’s think about pole position in Brazil, after losing two or three tenths in the first sector. How did you manage to get him on pole in the other five corners?It was just amazing.
“But consistency in this kind of delivery is what makes the difference. And I think Max is really establishing new standards in terms of how consistently you can perform strongly.”
Stella added that he was confident the team could continue their upwards trajectory in 2024, saying they were not yet finding it to be a case of “diminishing returns” as they go deeper into this set of regulations.
The arrival earlier this year of Red Bull’s engineers Rob Marshall and Ferrari’s David Sanchez was a big help, he said. As did the fact that this year’s car evolved in the team’s new wind tunnel and simulator.
2024 McLaren livery: LAUNCHED! ? Introducing our new look for the 2024 F1 season! #WhateverItTakes pic.twitter.com/n1nk6ImG5I
– McLaren (@McLarenF1) January 16, 2024
“I hope all those ingredients will combine to make our team more competitive and produce a better car than last year,” Stella said. “So far, I have to say that we’re not seeing diminishing returns. This will have to be clearly demonstrated once we put the car on the ground. But when it comes to the progression of the wind tunnel and the CFD, we see that the slope we set last year that led to the progression in Austria and then in Singapore. . . It looks like we can do it.
McLaren chief executive Zak Brown said he “feels confident” ahead of the new season, which starts in Bahrain on March 2. He warned, however, that Red Bull, which could simply prevent last year’s car from arriving mid-season, given its huge lead, there would likely still be a big gap.
Brown implored the FIA’s governing body to take a close look at Red Bull’s relationship with AlphaTauri, saying it was unfair in the modern era for one company to own two teams.
“They [AlphaTauri] are moving, as I understand it, to the U. K. , which I think will gain advantages for both groups,” Brown said. “When the [property] regulations were implemented, the game went into a different situation. We had a huge gap between groups like us with huge budgets and smaller groups. Now everyone is pretty much at the ceiling [budget cap]. So I think everyone plays with a bat of the same length to use a baseball term. This is a serious challenge to the fairness of the game and to the fans. That’s why it’s almost not allowed in any other form of primary gambling.
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