McLaren were tipped to be one of the teams to capitalise on the major regulation changes that came with the start of the 2022 season, as the team looked to become regular podium challengers in the new era of F1.
They got off to a nightmare start at the Bahrain Grand Prix, with both Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo finishing in the bottom four of drivers to complete the race, with only Nicholas Latifi and stand in Aston Martin driver Nico Hulkenberg finished below the McLaren drivers.
The team steadily improved over the course of the season, with Norris picking up the team’s only podium of the season at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, finishing behind a Red Bull one-two.
Despite being the only driver outside of Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull to finish on the podium in 2022, Norris believes that McLaren should have achieved more last season.
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“A podium always means something. It means something to me, means something to the team. But one isn’t enough,” said the 23-year-old.
“One is like, we got lucky, and all of this stuff. You want to feel like you deserve to be there every time and we deserved to be there for sure. We weren’t quick enough to be there. We were kind of way ahead of where we deserve to be.
“But yeah, one time isn’t enough for me. It’s not a good enough job by the whole team.”
With a brand new, state-of-the-art wind tunnel facility nearly completion, McLaren are certainly aiming to become a major force in Formula 1 again in the near future, after a decade of slowly building themselves back up to where they deserve to be.
Norris has admitted that McLaren struggled with constancy in 2022, with there being a major performance difference between various race weekends, which the team never quite managed to put their finger on.
“We’ve been quite up and down,” said Norris.
“We’ve had a weekend like [Abu Dhabi] where we’ve been quick, and then we were in Brazil, which was one of our worst weekends of the whole season.
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“We’ve had one of the biggest lows, and then maybe one of the best highs of the year in the final two weekends.”
Red Bull are rumoured to be sniffing around Norris, with the idea of acquiring the services of the Brit when Sergio Perez’s contract expires at the end of 2024.
Norris has so far been loyal to McLaren, however with the 23-year-old tipped as a future champion, he may be forced into a move to achieve his goals, should McLaren not make the required steps forward to become title challengers.