Steiner praises remarkable McLaren U-turn

Former Haas team principal Guenther Steiner has praised McLaren's remarkable U-turn from the start of 2023, when the British outfit were "nowhere".

McLaren entered 2023 with one of the worst packages on the grid, yet made a staggering turnaround in the Austrian Grand Prix that season. 

The introduction of effectively a B-car transformed the Woking-based team, and saw the outfit rocket from the back of the grid to towards the front. 

As a result, nine podiums were claimed in the second half of last season, with its improvements having continued into 2024. 

McLaren has gone from strength to strength and now has the best car on the grid, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri having secured 12 podiums – including two wins – from the 14 completed rounds.

Steiner has been impressed by how well McLaren fixed its problems and puts it down to the team having a strong understanding of the current regulations.

"Absolutely, and I'm not saying how good they are now," Steiner said on the RacingNews365 podcast.  "I go back, as you rightly said, to 2023. 

"When they came out, they were nowhere, nowhere. Four, five, six races later, they catch up and start getting good, they're in the top three, top four. 

"Then they come back the year later in 2024 and make the next step. I think they've got actually a good understanding what is needed to make this latest regulation of car work well."

McLaren's 'very good understanding'

McLaren is one of the few teams to have introduced regular upgrades which have always improved the car. Aston Martin and Mercedes both saw its performance decrease in the past after introducing a new part. 

Ferrari is the big team to have suffered from this recently, following a new floor for the Spanish Grand Prix which saw Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc suffer from porpoising. 

McLaren has had none of these issues and understands how to avoid factors like bouncing. 

As pointed out by Steiner, when a team understands the regulations, they can introduce parts which it knows will work, rather than depending on the wind tunnel which has proven not to correlate with how the current cars behave on the circuit.

"The bouncing and all that stuff, because it's so difficult to understand," explained Steiner. 

"But when you understand it, you can work at it and get the development right, because a lot of people, as we saw this year, they brought upgrades to the cars, which made the car actually go slower.

"Even if in the wind tunnel it showed more downforce, which is what you go for, but certain things, you cannot simulate in the wind tunnel what this regulation of car do on the racetrack.

"So I think McLaren just have a very good understanding of what is needed and when they develop, they develop for the needs of the car and they're not just looking at more downforce which then you cannot use because the car is not drivable anymore."