Ten stages from the end of the championship, the McLaren team, which has made some truly impressive progress this year, is just 42 points behind Red Bull Racing in the constructors’ championship. McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown makes no secret of his surprise that his team has managed to get into a fight with the championship-winning team.
“If I say I’m not surprised, it won’t be sincere,” Brown admitted in an interview with BBC Sport. – Red Bull had a very big advantage over everyone else, then the Mercedes team improved noticeably, but it seems to me that we will continue to close the gap.
Could I imagine that by the summer break we would reach a level where one race would be enough to take the lead in the championship? To do this, we need to win the winning double and record the fastest lap.
Do I think everything will be exactly the same? No. But if we continue on the same trajectory as the last six or seven races, then by the end of the year we will reach what we need. Although I believed that we would not reach the level where we are now until 2025.
It will not be easy for us and I believe that the fight will continue until the very last race. The difference in the capabilities of the cars is not that big and probably everything will depend on the results of Sergio Perez. If he still manages to perform as well as possible, the fight promises to be extremely intense. If we continue to perform as we are doing now, then we have good chances, because both of our drivers are consistently fighting on the front row.
We all make different types of mistakes, but in my opinion this is also a process of gaining experience, from which we learn a lot. And it doesn’t matter who made the mistakes: the drivers or the team, because we do a common work. It is important that we don’t allow such mistakes to be repeated.”
Brown recalls that in 2016, when he was appointed CEO of McLaren Racing, the team was in a dire state: “It was worse than I thought. We were 9th in the championship, we had extremely mediocre cars and, in my opinion, only three sponsors. It was upsetting for both the fans and our drivers, and the morale of the team was at a very low level. It was all just scary.
We lost a lot of money when we needed resources, so that we could invest in technology, in riders, in the people that we needed. We changed power suppliers twice, started to make progress gradually, but by 2022 there was a feeling that progress had slowed down. But when we put Andrea Stella in charge of the team, and he did some reorganization – quite a lot actually – and really got going, he managed to bring the team together, and since then we have just been cruising along. Even though we have had a lot of problems along the way, there are obstacles.”
When it was announced that Adrian Newey would be leaving Red Bull Racing, McLaren also considered inviting the famous designer to return, but ultimately dropped the idea.
“We are not going to sign Adrian,” Zac Brown confirmed. – I am happy with our team. And we are good friends, he is a very talented specialist who has achieved more than anyone else. However, I could not be happier with the team we have already formed. We can handle the tasks that lie ahead of us ourselves.
I am happy with the way our racing team works and we will try to win the world championship with the people who are working for us now.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
