17/01/2024
NEWS STORY
Despite increasing interest from rival teams, Zak Brown remains confident that he can keep what he considers the best line-up on the grid at McLaren.
The American was speaking at the unveiling of the livery the Woking team intends using this season, and it is fair to say that the mood was a lot more optimistic than twelve months earlier.
As early as the 2023 launch the team knew its car was a dud and pre-season testing and the subsequent races bore this out. However, rather than spending the remainder of the season moaning, as some did, McLaren returned to the drawing board and what resulted was one of the most impressive turnarounds in living memory.
Taking full advantage of the revised car, Lando Norris and rookie teammate, Oscar Piastri, took the Woking outfit to fourth in the standings, securing nine podiums, while the Australian youngster won the Sprint in Qatar.
Even before the mid-season revival it was known that Red Bull was interested in Norris, while Piastri was also attracting the eye of rivals, and while the Briton is under contract until the end of 2025 and his teammate the end of 2026, it has been shown time and time again that these contracts are often not worth the paper they are written on.
Nonetheless, Brown remains confident of keeping both drivers in the long term.
"I have a belief, that whether its employees, drivers, sponsors, that it's our job to take care of them and for them to want to be at McLaren," Brown told reporters at Tuesday's livery launch. "So, I tend to focus on making sure that McLaren is the best place environment and people want to be with us. Because you ultimately can't control external approaches to those various people.
So, I'm very confident about the relationship that we have with Lando," he added. "I know he's very excited for this year and was very impressed with what he saw in the second half of last year. He loves working with Andrea and everyone on the team. So, all we need to keep doing is giving him the environment he wants to be in. Then I'm confident he'll stick around, as opposed to trying to kind of sell against the competition. That's never been my way.
"We have Lando under contract for another couple of years," he continued, "and of course we are in dialogue with him on a continuous basis. We're very focused now here obviously on the short term, but 2026 is not far away and we recognise that being able to retain Lando and Oscar for the foreseeable future is definitely a key element and something that is a high priority for us."
"The relationship between Lando and Oscar I think is a point of strength for our team," added Andrea Stella. "The two have almost complimentary driver characteristics from a driving and technical point of view.
"For Lando it's almost unexplored as to how good he is, sometimes he surprises us with some of the performances he can put together."
Being a British-based team, it is perhaps understandable that the British media present was mainly interested in when Norris might score his first F1 win.
"I think the first victory is always somehow the most important," said Stella, "because when you have come to some confidence with it, I think some other things come slightly easier. But at the moment, I would say the main reason why this has not been possible is because we haven't put Lando in condition to consistently compete for the victory.
"So when Lando wins his first race, it will be a beautiful moment. He's ready for that. It's more about us being ready in delivering the car that allows him to take the opportunities. At the moment, like actually we've been leading races, even last year, more than once, but we couldn't kind of consolidate this result up to the chequered flag. So conditions are there.
"We're very impressed by how Lando actually was leading the races, like if you think he was saying we gave everything we could, Brazil, actually was another one where just a few more tenths in the car, and the victory would have come home. We look forward to it, and hopefully we'll have the opportunity in 2024."