McLaren CEO Zak Brown has issued a rallying cry at the team's Woking headquarters, insisting the world champions will be winning races 'sooner rather than later' despite a disastrous start to the season.
After winning the constructors' championship for the past two years and the drivers' title with Lando Norris last season, McLaren have endured a difficult start to F1's new era. Oscar Piastri failed to start either race in Australia and China, while Norris also failed to start the grand prix in Shanghai and finished a distant fifth in Melbourne.
The reigning world champion already trails championship leader George Russell by 36 points, but Brown implored team personnel back at base that positive results are on the horizon ahead of the next round in Japan on 29 March. 'We got to get ready for Japan,' he said in a video published on McLaren's X page. 'We've got the two best drivers in the world, we've got the best racing team in the world, the best culture in a racing team. So let's just get on with it, go to Japan, race these cars.'
Brown added: 'I guarantee you when we win our next race, which will be sooner rather than later, we're not going to be thinking about speed traces or batteries or anything. We're going to be winning grand prix races.'
Team principal Andrea Stella acknowledged after the race in Shanghai – which saw McLaren's first double DNS in over two decades – that the electrical failures on both cars were out of the team's control. 'It is a tough moment, that's for sure,' he said. 'But, at the same time, and this was testified and witnessed in the conversation with Lando and Oscar after the race, both remain quite positive.'
