Even with success in 2024, McLaren must improve to remain in contention.
With the Formula One season over, some McLaren fans are trumpeting the team’s first Constructors’ Cup silverware in 26 years, while others are lamenting how the Woking-based squad stunted their drivers’ title bid in a sadly embarrassing choke job.
Beyond that, other fans are questioning the importance of the Constructors’ Cup. After all, they insist, the teams’ rank only benefits their finances and bolsters their prestige in the eyes of a potential fat-wallet tycoon looking for a sponsorship deal. While that claim certainly holds some water, I would guess it was only valid because of the dull, yawn-inducing predictability of the top manufacturer contest the previous 14 seasons had consistently furnished us with. The guy securing the quickest ride would invariably clinch the individual title for his resume, bringing the teams’ honors home in tow almost by default.
This time was different, though. The hands-down best team of the 24-installment campaign was outperformed by the brilliant charge of one Max Verstappen in what constituted a richly deserved title defense in the teeth of the inferior equipment the three-time champ had been dealt with. In other words, the Drivers’ title could have gone the papaya way should the team have avoided the flaws and pitfalls they were plagued with throughout the season. What are these flaws? What takeaways must be handled and scrutinized, come what may, back at the Woking HQ if the team is out to field a bid for the 2025 laurels?
As a longtime McLaren supporter, I was relieved by the outcome of the Constructors’ championship and yet overwhelmed and aggrieved by the systemic woes that are certain to carry over into 2025 without due scrutiny.
Lando Norris in Miami (photo courtesy Sports Illustrated)
The online crowd has already extolled the record-tying eight poles scooped up by Lando Norris in 2024. On the flip side, I hate to mention that the previous McLaren guy’s eight-pole seasons have all resulted in the Drivers’’ title. So, Lando’s egregious failure to convert is apparent. The consistently appalling first-lap performance has repeatedly cost him a shot at a race win. In modern Formula 1, reclaiming your way back to the top of the field proves too challenging of an ask, given the fierce, almost Indycar-like competition that is uncharacteristic of the preceding seasons.
The same criticism is valid of the otherwise sensational Oscar Piastri. Credit where credit is due: in just his sophomore year in the big leagues, the Aussie has managed to complete every single lap of every single race, thus joining the elite cohort of Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton, and the already mentioned Max Verstappen in their prime. He has also picked up two Grand Prix wins, with his impeccable and incredibly mature Baku drive becoming an instant classic. The guy has the talent, the balls, the racecraft, and the ice-cold mental toughness, all required to be at the top of the game.
Piastri wins (photo courtesy The Sports Rush)
But while he is world champion material and all that stuff, accolades aside, he should be thunderously chastised over his dauntingly poor qualifying showings week in and week out. To reiterate, for all of Piastri’s uunrivaledovertaking magic, you cannot be hoping to vie for the spot atop the drivers’ rankings while having to weave your way through the pack in 20 out of the 24 wheel-to-wheel skirmishes of the campaign. Those fractions of a second you fail to find in Saturday’s shootout will, sure enough, keep costing him the coveted P1 come the end of Sunday.
Back to a much more experienced Norris, though. For all his youthful looks and vibes, Lando can no longer be considered an up-and-coming maverick racecar driver. Next year, he will be in the seventh full-time Formula 1 season with McLaren. Yet another failure to live up to the billing may easily make the papaya top brass reconsider their choices and demote Norris to the Number Two second-fiddle duties. Therefore, instead of overanalyzing and overdramatizing his missteps and hiccups both on social media and in countless interviews with the motor racing press, Lando will be better off hunkering down, getting dialed in, and doing the damn job behind the wheel of his superior car with surgical precision.
Leading the race in a landslide, the way he was in Singapore earlier this year, and almost crashing out of that lead twice points to a bothersome lack of focus. I would not say there is a lack of coolness under pressure on his part. What pressure? Unlike the glorious Piastri–Leclerc standoff in Baku, Lando was cruising to what should have been a lock-in W, absolutely unchallenged by anyone. The chinks in the mental armor may – and indeed will – be the difference between the Verstappens of this world and the trailing runner-ups.
Finally, there is the team itself. While they undoubtedly deserve a ton of praise over the MCL38 beast of a car, they cannot afford to screw up their drivers on every other race weekend, whether it be a qualifying session or a points-paying event. The dreaded and mistimed pit calls, the race engineers’ inability to find the right words to guide their drivers to a victory, and the distressingly abject failure to ensure the title contender knows and observes the basic rules will unforgivingly result in botched leads and bottled victory challenges.
The accomplished and storied McLaren team hobbled towards its first significant achievement in more than a quarter of a century. But it must hone its communication skills and culture to stick around in the winners’ circle in the face of growing and ferocious competition we will experience in 2025.
