In the last few years, McLaren’s Formula 1 team has gone through a massive overhaul and resurgence. The Papaya outfit is no longer the mess they were in the mid-2010s and is one of the top teams that seems to keep on getting better.
This improved performance has led the team to obtain several sponsors in the last few years. Recently a massive rumor has come out, as per SportBusiness, McLaren is in talks with $431 Billion worth Fintech giant, Mastercard ahead of the Miami Grand Prix.
The Woking-based team is in strong competition with other top teams such as Aston Martin, Mercedes, and Ferrari. With the Maranello-based outfit’s recent announcement of its partnership with Hewlett Packard, it seems that McLaren is also in a strong position to obtain their own multi-million dollar sponsorship deal.
If the Papaya team does manage to obtain the sponsorship deal with Mastercard, they will likely be called ‘McLaren Mercedes Mastercard.’ Moreover, from the recent trend in the sport wherein a lot of teams are obtaining payment service sponsors, like RB’s deal with Visa and Cash App, it seems only a matter of time before the Zak Brown-led team obtains the sponsorship that will definitely help them in many ways going forward.
Andrea Stella reveals McLaren has not lost ground to Red Bull in the 2024 F1 season
The 2023 F1 season saw one of the biggest turnarounds by an F1 team in recent years. With the upgrade packages that McLaren brought throughout last season, they went from backmarkers to constant podium challengers.
But, their impressive form throughout the latter half of the 2023 season seems to have not been carried forward to the 2024 season. The Woking-based team is currently the third-best team behind dominant Red Bull and Ferrari. But, recently the McLaren Team Principal, Andrea Stella revealed that the team hasn’t lost ground to the Christian Horner-led outfit even after a somewhat average start to the ongoing season.
I think Red Bull did not develop very much last year. Clearly, they were working quite a lot on the ground because they innovated the car dramatically. And, to innovate the car like they did, it takes months of redesign. So, I think they were doing all this work and then when they came with the new car it was a big step. So even if apparently we kind of have lost some ground. I think we lost some ground because we gained so much ground before, while they were not developing. Andrea Stella said in an interview with Motorsportweek
The McLaren team boss also shared how he thinks that if his team continues to develop like they did last season, they might eventually catch up to the Red Bulls. McLaren is set to bring upgrade packages to Miami and Imola, so it will definitely be interesting to see how those upgrades will perform. The Miami GP weekend is slated to kick off from next month’s 3rd May onwards.
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