McLaren will need "a lot more" than just its impending upgrades package to make the 2023 Formula 1 season a successful one, Lando Norris has warned.
Pre-season testing gave the impression that it is going to be a tough start to the year for the Papaya team. They will hope to mark their 60th anniversary with a strong result in the championship this season, but the MCL60 look likely to start the year towards the back of the grid.
Development targets were missed, chief executive Zak Brown admitted after testing. McLaren will, of course, be able to develop their car further as the year goes on. The first batch of upgrades is due to arrive ahead of the fourth race of the year, in Baku at the end of April.
But Norris was warned that it will take a lot more than that for his team to mount a serious challenge for fourth place in the constructors' championship. He said: "We know we need a step in efficiency, we need more downforce. We also need to go in the straights quicker.
"So, there's obviously a path we need to try and find, and I believe we're slowly finding our way there, but we need a lot more. It's not just small things. We need some bigger things just it still takes a long time to achieve. But hopefully this is a bit of a pathway to that."
A slow start would not be unfamiliar – McLaren were awful in Bahrain last year and struggled throughout the campaign with the MCL35, which proved to be tricky to get to grips with. On a positive note, Norris thinks it should be more simple for the team to get on top of their car this time around.
He added: "We're in a reasonable position to start the season but we have similar limitations to what we did last year. But I think this year we have a clearer plan on how to tackle those changes than what we did last year.
"I think it's a mixture of two things. One is the general balance and two is overall downforce. Overall downforce kind of fixes 90% of the problems but to become that final step, there is other things on top of it.
"I think we have a lot of what we need. Of course, we still know that the wind tunnel is coming, the simulator is coming, two things that will definitely help us take another step forward, but we need to do more with what we have now already.
"What we're having in Baku should be what we're starting the season with. If you want to be a top team, it's where we should've started the season with those kinds of parts which are coming. But until then, we'll just do the best we can to make the most of what we have now."
