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Brown fronted the media midway through the day’s action and proclaimed that he is targeting race wins this season as his squad builds on its strong recovery in 2023.
It’s a bold, optimistic statement and is on brand in terms of the rhetoric from the squad ahead of testing.
However, team principal Stella doesn’t appear to share the same level of enthusiasm and instead seemed to slightly temper expectations on Thursday night when he sat down with the media to digest the day’s activity.
It wasn’t an especially bad day for McLaren, but it wasn’t a good day either.
An issue with the fuel tank stopped Lando Norris while he was on a race simulation, and the squad only managed 87 laps. Next worst was Alpine, which managed 111 laps as Ferrari banked 138 on a day that saw Carlos Sainz fastest.
“It’s a big year,” Brown announced shortly after lunch.
“I think we’ll definitely start this season much better than we did last [year]. Our men and women at McLaren did a really good job over the winter.
“Nine other teams in the sport, all with similar budgets and infrastructure and so on, so the competition is going to be closer than ever, but we feel that we look good.
“It is to win races this year,” Brown added of his team’s ambitions.
“Last year, with six seconds, it’d be nice to make another step towards the top.
“We certainly want to start where we finished and progress over the season.
“I see no reason why, if we can keep up the development we’ve had since the summer of last year, we shouldn’t be in a position to get on that top step.”
The team has new facilities and new staff, it restructured its technical team early last season.
Brown’s comments suggest he believes McLaren’s rebuilding process is over and it’s time to start delivering results.
Logically, that is by moving forward from where the team was last year, when it was scoring regular podiums.
Progress has been made during the (European) winter and the MCL38 is a better car in launch spec than the MCL60 a year ago.
While Brown exudes confidence and optimism, Stella offered a more realistic, pragmatic, even subdued appraisal of the year ahead.
“I think some of the weaknesses have been improved,” Stella said of the MCL38
“For instance, we are, I would say, happier with the grip on the rear axle, which was one of the aspects that we wanted to work on. Overall, there is more grip in the car.
“But there’s some aspects that we still have some work to improve,” he added.
“The major performance opportunity remains overall grip.
“It’s not like you need to correct features, you just left to put more grip on the car, which mainly comes from ergonomic performance but we have some more margin to improve also from a mechanical point of view, and also in terms of interaction with the tyres.
“So, in all these three aspects, aerodynamic, mechanical grip, interaction with the tyres, we plan to bring developments over the course of the season.”
The Italian went on to describe the current car as a “good foundation” on which to build and suggested Red Bull Racing remains the class of the field.
The car has potential, but it needs to be unlocked – the insinuation is that early wins are unlikely but, should everything go to play and the team continue on its trajectory, that will come.
“What we have seen in our own development is that we seem to be able to keep the gradient of development that we started last year,” Stella noted.
“That led us to the Austria, Singapore, and the launch car development.
“So, if we keep this developing… I can’t say we’re going to get there, but I become more optimistic that we can be in a competitive position.
“Obviously, if Red Bull keeps developing at the same level, we’re never going to meet them.
“But I think the important thing is that you can keep this development over time.
“If you think in our own journey, at least after the technical reassessment, reorganisation of the team, we are not even 12 months in,” he added.
“So it’s a relatively young journey, a short journey from this point of view, but I’m encouraged with what I see coming from a development point of view.
“Hopefully we can have it on the MCL38 in the early races of the season.”
