Stella believes McLaren can think about winning the race in 2024

McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella believes his team can expect to win races in the 2024 season, as long as they continue to promote the MCL38 throughout the year.

After the Japanese Grand Prix, McLaren confirmed its position as the third team on the grid with 69 points in the World Constructors’ Championship so far, 35 points more than Mercedes and 36 more than Aston Martin and 51 points less of the Scuderia. Ferrari, second in the standings.

Compared to this time last year, McLaren has made a good start to the season and Andrea Stella has insisted that his team is “not far” from Ferrari and will go down in the battle for the lead this year for him.

“Today it seems we have lost this battle (that of development), but we are striving to be more competitive in the near future. » The Italian said on the F1 Nation podcast after the conclusion of the Japan Grand Prix where Lando Norris finished fifth and Oscar Piastri eighth.

“I would say Ferrari, of course, they are not very far ahead. So I think it will be a development battle this year because these cars offer a lot of performance through development. I can say that is the main goal for us. »

“It’s good to see that they (Ferrari) are only a tenth better than us. On a track like this (at Suzuka in Japan), where there’s a lot of damage and easy overtaking to a certain degree, it’s hard to keep the fast cars behind, though We had a very good qualification. This means that the cars are almost finished in the pecking order.

“We definitely hoped to be able to finish on the podium. » he insisted. “We tried to finish on the podium, but we stopped too early with Lando (Norris) to make sure we kept the position. »

“In the end we didn’t have enough speed to maintain the position – especially against Carlos (Sainz) because he was able to stay on the line and get a few laps on his tires. Then he was able to pass Lando without any problems. »

“We expected this stage, but we found out during the race that it was impossible. But as I said, we are not far. I hope we will have a development soon that will achieve this. »

Improvement in Miami

As for future upgrades planned for the MCL38, McLaren has planned an update for the Miami Grand Prix (the sixth round of the championship after China), then one or two more later in the season.

“We should have a good streak of development in Miami. » Stella added. “Even though it’s a Sprint event, of course we’ll try to take them. We should then have at least one round, if not two more rounds of development in this season. »

Connecting P3

Although McLaren’s goal is to win and fight for the world championship, Stella is keen to remind fans of the British team that the immediate goal is to consolidate third place in the standings.

“The first part of the message we are sending internally is that it is an important result for us to include McLaren as the third best team at this stage of the season, because it confirms the trend we started twelve years ago. »

“But we are obviously looking to the future and we consider that Ferrari is not far away, it is certainly within our development capabilities. So we are fully committed to giving the car enough performance to be able to attack Ferrari for second place. »

“If we make the same kind of progress that we did in the last race, why don’t we think about winning the race this year? I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I think it’s in numbers, in reality, and that’s certainly the mindset that everyone at McLaren has. We’re working diligently to achieve this.