Heading into this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix, McLaren sit third in the championship. Over the winter, they appear to have leapfrogged Mercedes in the race to catch Red Bull.
The Woking outfit have amassed 69 points so far, leaving them 51 behind second-place Ferrari and further 21 back from the dominant Bulls. Damon Hill believes that, based on their current trajectory, they’ll bridge the gap to Max Verstappen’s team first.
Still, they’re expecting a difficult weekend in Shanghai. The feeling is that the circuit doesn’t suit the characteristics of their car, and so they may lose some ground.
Oscar Piastri has predicted that there may be some ‘chaos’ in store in the first test of F1’s new sprint-race format. And McLaren may need it to finish above their competitors.
Piastri comes into the event sixth in the championship, five points behind teammate Lando Norris in fifth. That’s exactly where you’d expect them to be based on their position in the constructors’.
Out on track, though, McLaren have only managed to get both of their cars into the top six at one of the four races so far. That came in Australia, when Norris grabbed a podium and Piastri came home fifth following Verstappen’s retirement.
Andrea Stella says one F1 driver has disrupted the pecking order in 2024
Speaking via Motorsport-Total, McLaren’s team principal Andrea Stella picked out one driver who has thwarted them on occasion this year. Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso has finished above one or both of the McLarens at two of the four races so far.
He finished sixth in Japan last time out, two spots ahead of Piastri, and was fifth in Saudi Arabia as Norris had to settle for eighth. The 42-year-old appears to be extracting the absolute maximum from a car that has only delivered nine points for teammate Lance Stroll.
Stella views Alonso as something of an outlier when he’s assessing the performance of the top teams. The Italian worked alongside him as his race engineer at Ferrari between 2010 and 2014, and then again when they both moved to McLaren.
He said: “As is often the case, he did a very good job [in Japan] and is a bit special in that respect. It changes the performance limits of the car a little.
“But we are happy to be the team with the third most points again, which means we can strengthen our third place in the World Championship. That’s positive.”
Fernando Alonso signs new Aston Martin contract
Following the race at Suzuka, Aston Martin confirmed that Alonso had signed a new deal that will take him to at least the end of 2026. This, in itself, is a marker of how well he’s performing.
Alonso will be 45 when the guaranteed portion of that contract comes to an end. But team principal Mike Krack has been saying since the start of the year that they wanted to tie him down nonetheless.
Sky Sports F1’s Martin Brundle has marvelled at the ‘incredible’ longevity of a driver who already holds the record for race starts with 381. We now know for sure that he’ll pass the 400 mark in Aston green.
Sauber’s Zhou Guanyu named Alonso ahead of the likes of Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton when asked to his name his F1 dream team, even at this stage of his career. Clearly, key figures up and down the F1 paddock are hugely impressed by what he’s doing.
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