‘Because we can’ - McLaren explain F1 car launch approach amid secrecy questions

McLaren have explained why they opted for a “low-profile” launch amid suggestions they are trying to hide things on their new 2024 F1 car.

Unlike some of their rivals, and in contrast to last season, McLaren’s launch of their MCL38 challenger has felt somewhat toned down.

Images of the livery were dropped in January, before only a handful of images of the new car were released during Wednesday’s official launch.

McLaren have not yet shared any detailed pictures of their new challenger from its shakedown run at Silverstone and have posted only short teaser video clips on social media.

When pressed on the reasoning behind the approach, and if McLaren had many secretes to hide, Lando Norris responded in a tongue-in-cheek fashion: “Because we can.

“Because it’s a game of performance and why would you ever want to give away anything? You’ll see what the car looks like in two weeks at the race, so be patient.”

Teammate Oscar Piastri interjected by quipping: “At least we showed our car before it went on track. Unlike others,” which was seemingly aimed at Red Bull, who ran their RB20 on Tuesday and two days before its official launch.

“We have seen recently that teams have decided to have some style to launch the car, like we had last year, where there was a show and it was launched at the theatre at MTC, live-streaming,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said.

“But we also see that sometimes you may also want to have just a lower-profile in launching your car.“I guess these approaches can be alternated over time. We went from last year’s glamorous one, to this year - which is low profile.

“This is not only technical, this is also marketing and commercial. F1 is a large business, it’s not only technical and we need to take into account all of these variety of approaches.”

When asked how accurate the car presented is to the one the team ran at Silverstone today, Stella replied: “I would say pretty accurate. I wouldn’t be prepared for anything too shocking.”

Piastri then jokingly added: “We’re going to come [to the first race] with rockets on the sidepods!”