McLaren have revealed the first images of its new contender for the 2024 Formula 1 season.
Having already presented its livery for the upcoming world championship last month, McLaren has now shown off its new MCL38 design, which is a clear evolution of its predecessor, the MCL60.McLaren finished fourth in the world championship last year. However the rate of progress it made with its development programme last year has given them cause to believe it can start the new season in contention with the likes of Ferrari, Mercedes and even Red Bull.
“Going into this year, we look to build on the momentum of last season but are realistic in the knowledge that every team will have made progress and found competitiveness for their 2024 cars,” said team principal Andrea Stella.
Following Stella’s appointment at the beginning of last season McLaren has made further notable additions to its technical division. Rob Marshall joined the team from Red Bull at the beginning of the year as its technical director for engineering and design along with David Sanchez, formerly of Ferrari, as technical director for car concept and performance.
“We now have everything in place from an infrastructure, people and culture perspective so we continue to push forward and build on the work done to get us back to the front of the grid,” Stella continued.
The first images presented today reveal few details of the car’s design. “There are a number of innovations on the car, but not all the areas we want to address have been completed for our launch-spec car,” said Stella. “Those areas now become the focus of our in-season development, which is already in progress.”
The MCL38 is due to run for the first time later today. McLaren has retained its driver line-up of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, both of which have extended their contracts within the past few months.
Pictures: 2024 McLaren MCL38
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Coventry Climax
14th February 2024, 9:31
Looks like the old FiA groundeffect showcar again, but in different colors.
Also, in french, ‘velo’ means bicycle. Let’s hope it’s a bit faster than that. ;-)
Asd
14th February 2024, 13:40
What? It is nothing like FIA’s first show car, come on CC :)
anon
14th February 2024, 19:31
Coventry Climax, as noted by others, a fairly quick comparison between the FIA show car and the pictures here show that quite a few details don’t match. A particularly obvious difference between the two is the suspension on the show car – the geometry isn’t remotely similar, since the show car has completely different configurations at the front and rear of the car (push rod front and pull rod rear, whereas this has a pull rod at the front and push road at the rear).
If they are manipulating the images a bit, which some suspect they are, it’s more likely that they’ve based it off renders of the MCL60 (i.e. their 2023 car) than using the show car.
Coventry Climax
15th February 2024, 1:59
I wasn’t being serious, actually. Asd noticed, I guess.
On the other hand, how many ‘quite a few details’ does it take before things are ‘completely different’?
Now to be honest and serious: Strip away the (bit of) paint and all stickering and all current cars look very, very similar.
I’ve got some fifty years of comparison to come to that conclusion.
Under the bodywork things are more and more the same too, even if there’s many hastening in denial to point out and explain the different details. Yes, details.
No wonder though, given there’s only ten teams that all use parts from just some three or so manufacturers. And no wonder also, given the current rules. Even ‘cleverly’ cloning another team’s car is no problem.
It’s not convergence of design philosophy anymore.
We will have new rules in ’26, and cars that are more similar than ever, in every aspect, where rule changes used to be a guarantee to see all sorts of new things and big differences.
Give me a six-wheeler again, or some weird wings or driver positions. That’s when cars were truly different and things way more interesting.
But don’t heed me, I’m just an engineer and I don’t care for Netflix.
anon
15th February 2024, 6:26
Coventry Climax, it seems the real intention of your post was to simply bait somebody into replying to justify the pre-prepared rant being rolled out.
Coventry Climax
15th February 2024, 9:20
Looks can be deceiving.
I didn’t expect someone to take it this seriously. It wasn’t pre-prepared, but a spur of the moment.
But yeah, I’m quite consistent in my opinions, sorry about that.
Stu
14th February 2024, 10:12
Love McLaren but what a messy livery!
Scotty (@rockonscotty)
14th February 2024, 12:16
The two chrome logos on the head rest look like eyeballs!
Bob C.
14th February 2024, 13:05
Ahhh, now I can’t unsee this. You have condemned me to browse through the collection of DVDs from my son’s childhood to find Pixar’s “Cars” and rewatch it tonight (well, it’s not a bad movie, so little harm done)
AlanD
14th February 2024, 23:24
Scotty, now you’ve pointed it out, that’s all I can see,
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
14th February 2024, 12:26
Is it me or do their sidepods look bulky?
Todfod (@todfod)
14th February 2024, 14:16
I doubt its the actual sidepods they’ll race with. It looks like they just borrowed the sidepods from Alpine’s 2023 challenger
An Sionnach
14th February 2024, 16:14
I don’t like orange.
iFuel
14th February 2024, 17:25
I’ll always be a papaya orange apologist. But this one makes me think “Arrows”, not “McLaren”.
AlanD
14th February 2024, 23:42
iFuel, I always think the modern papaya orange is too dark. If you look at pictures of the original McLaren cars in orange, such as the M8A Can Am cars, they seemed to be a much brighter orange, more yellow than the current shade. It is difficult to know since colours in photos are always highly variablecat the best of times, and camera technology has changed a lot over the years, so you’d really need to see an original in its original paint job and a mordern car side by side in real life, or at least in the same photo, to be sure. HAs anyone else noticed this or is it just my eyes and brain fading?
Dex
14th February 2024, 23:39
If it’s as fast as it is ugly, we will have a different orange champion this season.