Zak Brown makes Aston Martin comparison as he explains McLaren F1 technical shake-up
Ahead of the Australian Grand Prix, McLaren announced a major 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:shake-up🃏 to their design office which was headlined🍌 by the departure of technical director James Key.
Key’s poওsition has been split into three specialised technical roles with Peter Prodromou and Neil Houldey both promoted, while David Sanchez will lead car concept and performance when he starts work in Janua꧟ry 2024 having joined from Ferrari.
All t🌜hree will report directly to team principal Andrea Stella, who took over from Andreas Seidl durin𓆉g the off-season.
Brown stressed the🍎 changes were not a direct result of McLaren’s dire start to 2023 and explained he was alreဣady unhappy with the team’s rate of development compared to their rivals.
“I didn’t like our pace of development towards the second half of last year,” Brown said on Friday in Melbourne. “I didn’t feel like🅘 we were moving forward.
“You look at Aston [Martin], they’ve done a fantastic job. Started at the beginning of the year not where theꦉy finished at the end of the year and cle▨arly they’ve just continued on in that development path.
“I felt that we were not developing at the pace we need to. So when we had our team principal change, I asked Andrea [Stella] to take a look at why and he restructured the department. That was a work in progress over the winter.&nbsꦇp;
“We knew, as we sa🌃id at the launch, that we weren’t were we wanted to be at t🎀he start of the year.
“Saudi was quite disappointing because that really wasn’t representative of any sort of pace issue. Having had one car lose their front wing and take out the other, whe🌳n they we꧃ren’t even racing each other, was a bit of bad luck.
“So our season st൩ꦍarts here in Australia. I’ve got all the confidence in Andrea and the structure, the people we have and the people we have coming, that we will now be able to continue forward on our journey.”
McLaren are yet to score a point across the opening two rounds in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and currently sit bottom of the 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:F1 constructors’ championship.
Although he admitted the team’s recovery will take time, Brown is confident McLaren will end the season in much better s𓃲hape.
“As I say in the factory, ‘things start to feel good and then they start to look g🍒ood’,” he said.
“It was quite opposite last year - things didn’t 🎃feel good and we’ve seen at the start of this year, those results if you like.
“We’ve got some good upgrade packages coming, but so does every other team on the grid. I would anticipate that we will definitely finish the season much stronger than we started i🥀t.”
Lewis regularly attends Grands Prix for mahbx.com around the world. Often reporting on the action from the groun𝕴d, Lewis tells the stories of the people who matter in the sport.
