McLaren CEO Zak Brown has remarked that he wishes to “punch in the nose” people who suggest that the team has secured the Formula 1 Constructors’ title in 2024.
The Woking-based squad is on course to end a Constructors’ Championship drought dating back to 1998 as it has a 36-point lead over Ferrari with three rounds to go.
McLaren managed to stem Ferrari’s renewed recent challenge at the previous round in Brazil, despite Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri coming home in sixth and eighth.
But while the points advantage lies with McLaren, Brown has warned the side can’t become complacent as it endeavours to pip both Ferrari and Red Bull to the crown.
“I feel great where we are,” Brown told select media including Motorsport Week at an event to launch the team’s new partnership with Mastercard in Las Vegas.
“It’s high stress because we have. I’ve never been here. We’ve not been here since 1998.
“36 points in the lead can evaporate into one race weekend and you’ve got Ferrari who could easily finished first and second, anything can happen in a in a street race as we saw in Brazil.
“So for those people that have come up to me with a foregone conclusion we’ve already won the championship, I kind of want to punch him in the nose.
“I think a lot of people have asked what are we doing differently now and we don’t want to do anything differently.
“We want to do exactly what got us to where we are. Take it one session at a time, feet on the ground, and I think we’ve seen from the start of the year.
“Max [Verstappen] won whatever it was five, six races in a row, myself and I think pretty much everybody went, ‘Oh this championships over’, and here we are.
“I think that shows how quickly things can change. So I think the minute you think you’ve done it before you’re in the end zone is a big mistake to make.
“So I feel good about where we are, but we’re very focused and we’re not going to celebrate until we hopefully have earned the right to celebrate.”
McLaren’s revival down to entire group
McLaren’s current outlook marks a stark contrast to the team that Brown arrived into in 2016 when it was languishing in the midfield with minimal sponsors on board.
The American has expressed that the entire group warrants praise for contributing to the turnaround that has taken McLaren from the bottom to the top in 18 months.
Asked how he feels about McLaren’s progress, Brown replied: “It’s high stress. I feel great about where McLaren are at the moment.
“I think that men and women at McLaren have done an awesome job in every aspect of the racing team, right?
“I’ll just say we’ve developed a very good race car like Laura who leads our finance department.
“With the cost cap you have to spend very efficiently and we have a great ROI [return on investment] on where we deploy our resources.
“Daniel Gallo is in charge of HR. We’ve got a fantastic culture. We’re looking after our people. We’re looking after our people’s family. We’re spending a lot of energy.
“This is 24 races for the first time. It’s hard not only on the racing team, but it’s easy to forget, It’s actually harder on the family, the partners, the kids that are sitting at home missing
their mum, their dads travelling around the world, and even if you’re not travelling there’s a factory, you’re working seven days a week, you’re working, long, long shifts.
“So, our commercial departments, which is our brands and we’re managing our partnerships, bringing new partnerships.
“I think our race car we have more than 100 partners, more than any racing team in the world.
“We have an awesome fan base, our communications team, and every single department if you like puts performance on our race car because you know you don’t have great aero if you don’t have a great wind tunnel, you don’t have a great wind tunnel if you don’t have great partners from the commercial department that’s allowing you to go ahead in the wind tunnel, etc.”
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