Norris looks back: 'Then we would have been second in the championship'

McLaren's season was one of extremes: from laughing stock in the early stages of the year to eventual race winner (the sprint race in Qatar, ed.). During the season, the English team announced that it had plucked several people from other teams to make further strides on the technical front. That gives Lando Norris the necessary confidence that even more is possible in '24.

"I'm very excited," says Lando Norris. To GPblog the McLaren driver says: "If we start the season how we were in the middle, we’re P2 in the constructors and P2 in the drivers. So I know it's not that, and it doesn't always work like that, but we're on the right track, which is what I'm trying to say."

McLaren learned a lot in '23

With many new people now busy at work at the Woking factory, Norris believes in a bright future for his team. "We have some new hirings, and the guys coming in, they come in 24, so maybe not everything that they can bring to us we're going to have on the car straight away, but something that we just already know now, we've learned already over the last four, five, six months. From the progress we've made, we've learned a lot."

In the end, McLaren finished fourth in the constructors' championship. It even caught up with the strongly started Aston Martin. But the team now wants more: "I'm excited, just because we're finally on the right track and we know which direction to push, and I just want to start the season off well. If we can start well in Bahrain, then I'll be a lot more excited."