McLaren has its eyes on becoming 'an F1 championship contender every year'

McLaren boss Zak Brown has set eyes on becoming an F1 championship contender every year from 2024 onwards. McLaren was on a positive growth trajectory until the 2022 F1 season.

The team had secured its first podium in a while in 2019 with Carlos Sainz. It finished the 2020 F1 season third in the championship and then in 2021, it scored its first pole position and first win in almost a decade.

The team was a midfield leader and on the precipice of becoming a frontrunner. All of that had to take a step back when the 2022 F1 car for McLaren was a disappointment. The team did score a podium with Lando Norris but compared to the previous season, it was slim pickings at best.

What made things even worse was Alpine jumping the queue and putting together a better package than McLaren. That helped the French team jump to P4 in the standings and become the best midfield team.

Brown, in an interview with Racingnews365, admitted that McLaren was still on an upward trajectory and the team plans to fight for podiums and wins from 2024 onwards. He said:

"[We won't be challenging in 2023], but starting in '24, I want to be knocking on the door [of podiums, wins and championships]. Because of our technology infrastructure, we won't will have the full benefit in 2024 as the wind tunnel comes online in the middle of this year which means our '24 car will start development in some of our older technology and the transfer over to the new."

He added:

"So really it is 2025 [when we will be able to fight], and we've got everything we need. We have no excuses."

Zak Brown looks back at the progress shown by McLaren

Brown looked back at the progress shown by the team in the last few years. The CEO emphasized how tangible growth for the team is a platform on which future success will be built. He said:

"If we look at where McLaren has been in the last five years, obviously you'd love to have linear progress. When we started this journey and I was put in as CEO, we were coming off our worst ever year in 2017. We had no sponsorship, big financial issues, big morale issue and were just a Formula 1 team."

He added:

"If we fast forward, we are now a competitive F1 team that has been on the podium nine times since it got back on it in 2019, we've won a race, had a pole and almost won a second race, and the car has awesome brands on it."

With Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri behind the wheel, the team will field a very young and inexperienced driver lineup this season. Having said that, both drivers are rated very highly and could prove to be the trump card for the team this season.