McLaren Hopes 2020 F1 Car Will Lap Within Less Than A Second Off Top 3 Teams

New McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl has helped guide the British outfit to a comfortable fourth spot in the 2019 Constructor’s Championship, with no signs of letting up.

Aside from their excellent performance this year, McLaren is also looking forward to the 2020 Formula 1 season, and with good reason – they’ve started working on next year’s car much earlier than in previous seasons, as reported by Autosport.

“We have a good pace now, we learned a lot with that car (2019 racer), we know what the weaknesses are and that is something we want to address for next year,” said Seidl. “For us, where we think the next step will come with car performance is that we have started this time – and it is the first time for a while – with a normal timing of doing a car.”

“We started straight after winter testing with an initial concept phase of next year’s car, which is different to previous years, and that fact together with having a clear technical director (James Key) in place gives me a lot of hope.”

Also read: Ferrari Admits 2019 F1 Car Struggles In Low-Speed Corners

While the team now sits 39 points clear of Toro Rosso, they remain 182 points shy of third-place Red Bull Racing and a massive 356 points behind championship leaders Mercedes – this is why Seidl isn’t expecting any miracles next year and is aiming for moderate gains.

“Our ambition is that next year we can go somewhere in-between the gap we are having at the moment, between the top three teams and us.”

“If you look at the lap times we are somewhere between 1-1.5 seconds away from the top three teams, and our target is to jump somewhere in-between that.”

In reality, that’s easier said than done, seen as how the top three teams aren’t exactly interested in standing pat while the rest of the grid catches up.