At the season opener in Bahrain, Lando Norris had finished dead last while team Oscar Piastri retired with an electrical issue.
At the next race, only Valtteri Bottas finished behind Norris and a few days later technical director James Key was axed. Such a seismic reaction so early in the season raised eyebrows along the length and breadth of the grid.
But the team’s CEO Zak Brown pleaded with the doubters to give him to rebuild.
Somewhat inexplicably at Silverstone this weekend, they had replaced Aston Martin as the best of the rest behind the Red Bull of Max Verstappen.
Norris was second and Piastri would have completed a podium double had Lewis Hamilton not been able to sneak a pitstop at just the right moment behind the late safety car.
The resurgence has been nothing short of remarkable but, having yo-yo’d with results already this season, the team are not getting carried away.
But clearly they are quick, Hamilton describing their car as a “rocket ship” on the straights as he desperately but ultimately unsuccessfully tried to find a way past when the safety car came in with 14 laps remaining.
There had been concerns the team’s qualifying pace would not be replicated in the race with their tyre degradation a little unknown in the hotter temperatures. Such fears proved unfounded in front of a record crowd of 160,000 as one of the former dominant forces of the sport rolled back the years.
Norris was seven years old when he first attended Silverstone cheering for Hamilton in his debut season. That he found himself racing him 16 years on is an exoneration of sorts for his decision to keep faith with McLaren with a long-term deal rather than look elsewhere for a drive.
McLaren had suggested they may well get a reality check over their pace – with a car that might not find its sweet spot at every race – in Budapest in two weekends’ time but they have gone from the sixth best on the grid to the current runners-up.
The upgrades first introduced at Austria and then tweaked for Silverstone, where a new front wing was introduced, have clearly worked. Rivals suggested those on the surface bore an uncanny resemblance to the front-running Red Bulls but Mercedes have since said they may yet be forced to do the same after an undulating Silverstone weekend.
In the aftermath, Brown said: “We’re back in the game and I’m sure tracks will suit different cars in different ways. We’ve got to keep pushing. Today was a good day at the office.”
Brown has been feeling the heat. He has been responsible for a monstrous overhaul at the team. He opted to bring Andrea Stella up from within the ranks to reluctantly become team principal back in December and then made the decision to axe Key. It was also American Brown who decided to call time on Daniel Ricciardo as a driver to bring in rookie Piastri.
There were critics of all three calls, not so now. And there is excitement of more to come. Silverstone exceeded expectations. As part of the McLaren rebuild, which includes a new wind tunnel, the aim were podiums in 2024 and race wins the following year. They now appear to be well ahead of schedule.
Silverstone caught the grid and even McLaren by surprise. As Piastri put it in the aftermath: “I think we’ve gone into another universe”, while adding amid his podium near miss, “hopefully there’s plenty more to come in the future.”
The pre-race team debrief had been all about the defensive and how to hold off those behind them. The decision to put Norris on the hard tyres rather than the soft made that even tougher.
There was method behind the madness at the time, the thinking by Brown being the hards would warm up amid the virtual safety car. When that became a full-blown safety car a lap later, it made for anxious moments on the McLaren pitwall.
They needn’t have worried.
