Lando Norris made it clear he wants to see McLaren make a significant step in the right direction this season as he pointed at what Ferrari achieved last year.
The Scuderia fielded an impressively quick car in 2022 that would have challenged for the title, had it not been for their engine problems and strategy blunders. As a result of those woes, they finished more than 200 points adrift of champions Red Bull.
But it still represented significant progress for Ferrari. They improved on their 2021 total by more than 200 points themselves, while a year earlier they had suffered a disaster by finishing sixth in the standings.
McLaren were less than 50 points behind Ferrari in that 2021 campaign, but did not push on like the Italians did last year. Instead, they scored just a little over half as many points as they had a year earlier and even lost out to Alpine in the battle for fourth place.
Looking at how things went so differently for his own team compared to Ferrari over that last winter, Norris feels McLaren have to match a similar level of gain over the course of one winter as the Scuderia did if they are to be more competitive.
"That's achievable. I think what they did was extremely good," he told Autosport of such a situation. "Going from where they were [in 2021], from almost getting beat by us, to going to where they are getting wins, fighting for podiums every single weekend... That's what we need to be aiming for.
"That level of a jump from one season to another. They've obviously had, not the luck, but they've maximised a new era, a new rules set for F1 with new cars, which has allowed them to make a bigger jump than ever. But there's still plenty of opportunities for us to achieve something like that and that's where we need to be setting our goals for."
In another recent interview with GQ magazine, Norris said of his title prospects: "With everything I've learned, maybe I could win a race, but I'm unlikely to win a championship until possibly that time. I know I need to be at the absolute top of my game in those years."
And McLaren chief Zak Brown wants to live up to that timeframe : "I'm convinced we're going to give him a winning car... He knows the journey we're on. He has bought into the journey that we're on, and I think it'd be early to be worried about [Norris leaving]."
