TESTING TIMES
McLAREN will have to find “double the normal amount” from its planned upgrades if the one-time Formula One powerhouse hopes to match its rivals near the top of the grid in 2023.
That’s the ominous warning from F1 legend Martin Brundle to McLaren and its rookie Australian driver, Oscar Piastri, ahead of the Saudia Arabia Grand Prix on Monday.
It’s easy to argue McLaren had the worst start to the season of any team on the grid in Bahrain. Piastri lasted just 14 laps in his maiden F1 start and star teammate Lando Norris crossed the line 17th after battling engine issues.
The papaya features at the foot of many pundits’ power rankings and it’s not happy reading for Piastri and Norris, who entered the 2023 season with optimism.
The young Australian has been touted as a star of the future, catching the eye of even Red Bull boss Christian Horner, who says Piastri has similar race-winning capabilities to reigning world champion Max Verstappen.
He spurned an offer from Alpine to join McLaren for his rookie F1 season, and the pressure is on all parties to hit the ground running.
Norris is into his fifth season as an F1 starter and yet to stand on the top step of the podium, despite also being rated similarly to Verstappen.
Considered a world champion in waiting, Norris is yet to sit in a seat capable of consistently challenging for podiums.
McLaren’s young driver lineup is one of the most exciting in F1, but its car is far from it.
A monster upgrade package is planned for Baku – the race after the Australian Grand Prix – but Norris says McLaren will “need a lot more” to be a genuine challenger. And Brundle agrees.
“(McLaren) is a team that needs to find double the normal amount from an upgrade and that’s a tall order,” Brundle told the Sky Sports F1 podcast.
“They think they know where that is. To have a slow car in Formula One is one thing; to have an unreliable and slow McLaren is a terrible thing.
“So they need to get that sorted out in a hurry.”
Norris’s ability to pilot a finicky papaya last season contributed to Daniel Ricciardo’s hasty exit from McLaren, which opened the door for Piastri to make his F1 start. That pressure to compare favourably with a teammate is now on Piastri – and Norris sets a high bar.
But how much longer will the Briton be his teammate?
Norris last year signed a four-year contract extension to stay at McLaren to the end of the 2025 season.
But with murmurs that Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc could be agitating for moves away from Mercedes and Ferrari, respectively, Norris’s name has entered the conversation.
“Lando – yeah, he has time on his side, but the years are slipping past,” Brundle said.
“He will be asking the same questions as George, as Lewis, as Charles: ‘What are we doing about this? Tell me how you’re going to close the cap to Red Bull and who is going to do that and why?’
“It’s a reasonable question from a driver. And I think if he doesn’t get the right answers at a suitable point, if he can jump into what looks like a race or championship-winning car, then he’ll have to take it.”
Brundle says Norris will have an exit route in his McLaren contract should the young star feel the papaya cannot produce. “Formula One contracts tend to be about 100 pages long – he ought to have an exit route out of there,” he said.