McLaren CEO Zak Brown's New Year's Resolution Seems To Be For The Team To Not Repeat Their Slow Start From 2023

McLaren CEO Zak Brown is hoping his team doesn't stumble out of the gates they did in 2023, something that hampered what the team could achieve with a blistering second half of the season.

While the McLarens were consistently the second or third fastest cars on the grid in from the summer break, it's easy to remember that the exact opposite was true at the start of the year.

Considering how bad they were through testing and into the start of the season, some idiots (*Raises hand*) even thought that they'd labor away at the back of the field all season long.

That didn't happen, but the slow start did put McLaren's ceiling for the year at P4 in the constructor standings instead of P3 or even P2 had they been more competitive through the spring.

CEO Zak Brown — as you'd expect — said he doesn't want to see the team show up at the first few races like that again.

"We hope to start the season kind of where we finished off,” Brown told Sky Sports, per Formula1.com “It’ll be interesting to see where everybody starts but we’re feeling good about our development. I think we learned a lot so I anticipate a much stronger start to ’24 than we had in ’23.”

McLaren Could Be Podium Contenders From The Start In 2024... If They Pick Up Where They Left Off

Picking up right where they left off would be massive for McLaren. By the time the checkered flag fell at Abu Dhabi, they had established themselves as podium challengers almost every weekend. Both of the team's drivers — Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri — were in great form down the stretch. If they're given a solid car from the start of the season, they could certainly be threats for podiums again.

Of course, who knows how well development is going for other teams is a factor as well. As Brown said, outside of the runaway champion Max Verstappen, the grid was extremely tight.

“The grid was unbelievably close, we had five teams with or more podiums, which is a record," he said. "So, one car that is uncompetitive with the rest of the field, and the rest of the field is unbelievably competitive.”

We're just over a month away from Formula 1 teams starting to unveil their cars. You can bet that there will be some serious excitement around McLaren's 2024 car.

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