Do you think Lando Norris will be able to build the McLaren team around him with guidance from Zak Brown, to bring McLaren back to the top? – Eoin
Lando Norris is already fully embedded within McLaren. He has been driving for them since 2019, and last winter signed a new contract that extended his stay with the team until at least to the end of 2026.
The team have total faith in him, and the feeling is mutual. As Norris put it after winning in Miami on Sunday: “I stuck with McLaren because I could believe in them, and I did believe in them, and today proved exactly that.”
In the circumstances of the last year, it’s easy to see why both are confident that they can reach their goals together.
Norris has been driving at a very high level for a long time, give or take the odd mistake here and there. And McLaren have come on in leaps and bounds under team principal Andrea Stella since he was promoted from performance director over the winter of 2022-23.
Stella was give his current role – after chief executive officer Zak Brown allowed former team boss Andreas Seidl to join Sauber/Audi – because Brown was unhappy with the progress the team were making in developing in 2022.
That lack of progress was apparent at the start of 2023, which McLaren started with an uncompetitive car, designed under former technical director James Key, before Key was removed from his role by Stella and Brown.
But since Stella reshuffled the technical department, McLaren’s progress has been remarkable. An upgrade in Austria leapt them from the back of the grid into the group behind Red Bull. That was followed by an upgrade in Singapore which made them the second fastest team at some races over the final third of last season. And now a first upgrade to the 2024 McLaren in Miami has led to a victory, albeit with a bit of help from the safety car.
At McLaren, they talk a lot about trajectory. As Stella put it after the previous race in China: “If we keep this strong trajectory for the next 12 months, why not? We may reach Red Bull.”
Do you think McLaren will be an option for Adrian Newey now? Do they actually need him? – Sean
I’m sure they’d considering him, but the mood music coming out of McLaren is not that of a team pursuing Newey hard.
McLaren Racing chief executive officer Zak Brown is a close friend of Newey – they are racing together in the Monaco historic Grand Prix this weekend.
But Newey is very expensive, and he does not work full-time, so signing him is not a no-brainer decision for any team, despite the obvious quality he would bring to any environment, and his unquestionable track record.
Brown said in Miami: “Adrian’s going to add value to any racing team. But we’re very happy with the trajectory that we’re on. Never say never. But I’m very happy with the team, the technical leadership, the way Andrea is running the racing team.
“And we’ve got a plan and we’re going to keep head down and, of course, always look for opportunities to make additive additions to the racing team.”
That’s not him saying that they won’t pursue Newey, but the feeling is that Ferrari are in pole position to sign him, assuming he wants to come back to F1 after his break this summer. And why would he have negotiated an early release from his contract if returning wasn’t his intention?
Should Kevin Magnussen be given at least a one-race ban because of the number of penalties he received over the Miami race weekend? – Michael
It’s fair to say that Magnussen did not have his best weekend in Miami. Clocking up four separate penalties in 19 laps in the sprint race was quite some going. And then he was blamed – and penalised – for the collision with Logan Sargeant that led to the safety car that turned the grand prix.
It’s not for me to say whether he deserves a race ban, even if that was suggested by some in Miami. McLaren driver Oscar Piastri described Magnussen’s actions as “pretty average”, Australian understatement for being unimpressed.
And his team boss Andrea Stella went further. “We have a case of a behaviour being intentional in terms of damaging another competitor,” he said. “This behaviour is perpetuated within the same race and repeated over the same season.
“How can penalties be cumulative? They should be exponential. Maybe you need to spend a weekend at home with your family reflecting on your sportsmanship and then go back. And if we see that you become loyal, fair and sportsmanlike to your fellow competitors, then you can stay in this business. It’s completely unacceptable.”
Magnussen now has 10 penalty points on his licence – just two away from a mandatory race ban, which comes with 12 points in any 12-month period.
No driver has been given a ban under this system, but Magnussen has amassed all his points since the second race of this season.
So if he is to avoid a ban, he has to get no penalty points at all for the rest of this season. That looks a tall order unless he has a major rethink of the way he approaches his racing.
Seeing this weekend that Lando Norris had full upgrades and Oscar Piastri only partial, to what extent do cars in the same team need to be the same? – James
Teams always try to keep both cars in the same specification if they can, if they have drivers who enjoy equal status, as is the case at McLaren. It’s easier to keep team harmony that way.
But sometimes the upgrade path is such that it just happens that a development – or part of it – is not ready for both cars. That’s what happened with McLaren in Miami.
Piastri had the new front wing, front suspension and front and rear brake ducts, while Norris also had the new sidepods and floor.
The upgrade was initially not due to appear until the next race at Imola, but McLaren managed to get nearly all of it ready one race early.
It’s never easy for a driver in Piastri’s situation in Miami. But the situation was explained to him, and he dealt with it very maturely. And he drove exceptionally well – Stella pointed out that his gap to Norris in qualifying was less than the performance differential between the two specs of cars. So, in essence, Piastri qualified faster than Norris.
Are F1 cars ‘easier’ to drive now than they were in the past? Drivers are having longer careers and none of them look tired after a race? – Peter
The current F1 cars are not quite the fastest ever – that would be those from the 2021 season, or possibly around 2004. But they are not far off. They have prodigious amounts of downforce and the peak cornering and braking loads are extremely high – above 5G.
They have more downforce than ever, but they are also a lot heavier than the cars of 2004, especially, and a little more than in 2021.
Two things are going on with the longer careers, I think. One is that the nature of the Pirelli tyres is that drivers are well below the limit in most races, because they are driving to a ceiling imposed by the tyres.
Pirellis are very thermally sensitive and they need to be kept below a certain temperature or they overheat and the performance never comes back. That lessens the physical strain on the drivers in races.
Occasionally, the tyres are not a limitation, and you see the effects on the drivers – such as after Qatar last year when the combination of mandated tyre-life limits, a track that was light on tyres, and excessive heat and humidity left some drivers needing medical attention after the race.
The other thing is that it is not just anyone having longer careers. The two drivers you are thinking of who will will go into their 40s – Fernando Alonso, who is already there, and Lewis Hamilton, who is about to be – are utterly exceptional.
They are proving that the the main thing that diminishes racing drivers is desire. Keep motivated and stay fit and, until ageing really begins to take hold, with issues such as worsening eyesight, drivers can go on for quite some time.
You describe Adrian Newey as the GOAT design engineer. Who would be the GOAT team principal and why? Would any current principals be on the list? – Edward
The answer to this is only ever going to be subjective, but there are some obvious contenders.
In chronological order, first of all, you have to look at Enzo Ferrari. He started off as a team principal before he founded his own company, which has since become so iconic that it is impossible to imagine F1 without it.
There was Alfred Neubauer, who led the Mercedes Silver Arrows in grand prix racing in the 1930s and then the dominant era of 1954-55.
Colin Chapman, team boss and chief designer of Lotus from the 1960s until the early 1980s, is held in extremely high regard for all his success, and the innovations he was behind, including monocoque chassis and venturi-floor ground effect.
Luca di Montezemolo, who turned around Ferrari from a period of uncompetitiveness to their return to domination with Niki Lauda in 1975 – laying the foundations for three titles in five years from then until 1979, would be in the conversation. His 20-plus years as as Ferrari president, including overseeing the Michael Schumacher domination of the early 2000s, adds to his claim.
On that subject, you’d have to include Jean Todt, team boss of Ferrari at the time, who assembled the Schumacher-Ross Brawn-Rory Byrne super-team.
Ron Dennis changed the face of Formula 1, and raised the bar massively, in his leadership of McLaren in the 1980s.
Not only did his team introduce innovations, such as the first carbon-fibre chassis in F1 in 1981, but he increased levels of professionalism exponentially, expanded F1’s commercial horizons – such as with his partnership with TAG, which funded McLaren’s Porsche-built engines from 1983-7 – and led McLaren to unprecedented levels of domination with Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost and Honda engines in 1988.
His 35-year leadership of McLaren compares with anything anyone else has achieved in F1.
In the present day, Toto Wolff and Christian Horner have to be considered, too.
Wolff is the most successful team boss in history, leading Mercedes to eight consecutive constructors’ titles from 2014-21, as well as seven consecutive drivers’ championships.
Horner is threatening those numbers, having led Red Bull to four consecutive title doubles from 2010-13, and currently on two doubles and counting since 2022, and doubtless another this year. And that’s in addition to Max Verstappen’s 2021 win, however controversial that was because of the circumstances surrounding the Abu Dhabi finale.