McLaren will have to wait until 2025 to see the full benefit of their new wind tunnel and development facilities, explains CEO Zak Brown.
A growing expectation looms at McLaren, who will be under pressure to demonstrate they are capable of closing the gap to F1’s top teams.
Lando Norris has signed a multi-year contract with the team, but the 22-year-old has set 2024 as the season he expects McLaren to start challenging at the front.
With this in mind, aside from McLaren’s desire to meet its ambitions, there is surely an urgency within the team to prove itself as a team worth challenging for race victories.
Many reports have suggested the Woking squad’s new wind tunnel will not fully impact development for a few years, and Zak Brown has now confirmed this.
Speaking in an interview with Speedcafe, Brown explained the estimated timeframe for the wind tunnel to make an impact:
“It’ll start to impact our 2024 car. It will have a full impact for our 2025 car.
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“Because it comes online in the middle of next year, which means we’ll already be started on our 2024 car.
“So I think we’ll have everything we need fully up and running for the 2025 season.
“We’ll be kind of 80% of the way there for the 2024 season, and I think it ties really well – you know – Oscar’s gonna be a rookie next year.
“So no doubt, being a rookie, and he’s not raced for a year, he’s going to need to get a bit of his race rust off him.”
Although it will take some time for McLaren’s new wind tunnel to improve development, the team cannot afford to wait until 2024 to start gaining on its rivals.
Formula 1 will undergo another regulation change in 2026, so the British squad must start showing its ambitions quickly before it loses more ground to the front-runner.
Team principal Andrea Stella has played down the team’s expectations for 2023, but this will do little to appeal to fans if McLaren fails to deliver results.
