Lewis Hamilton hopes McLaren could create an “amazing” three-team battle for the championship from 2021.
At last weekend’s season finale in Abu Dhabi, the Woking-based outfit secured third in the Constructors’ standings, their best finish in that championship since 2012.
Also, in qualifying, Lando Norris only finished a quarter of a second off the pole time set by Max Verstappen, the smallest gap McLaren have had to P1 since their last pole in Brazil eight years ago.
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And with McLaren rekindling their famous engine partnership with Mercedes from next season, Hamilton has high aspirations of his former team.
“I’m really happy to see the McLaren so close, particularly with how they’ve got changes and they’re using our engine next year,” he is quoted by RaceFans.
“It’s great to see that, at the end of the year with a good car, so that they can perhaps be in the fight with us next year. If that makes it a three-way team championship. I think that would be amazing for the fans to see.”
That would no doubt be the dream for Norris and new teammate Daniel Ricciardo, however, McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl played down that possibility.
“I think we need to stay realistic,” he said.
“Despite the good result we have this weekend and, despite the great outcome for us in the championship side with P3, I think we know exactly where we are.
“There’s still a huge gap to the cars in front, especially the Mercedes car and it is not something we will close from one year to the next year.
“We still know that we have a lot of deficits within the team in terms of organisation, in terms of infrastructure, which we need to close first.
“But again, we have a clear plan of how we want to reduce these deficits. It will take time. But I’m confident that if we do the right things on the team side, we can close these gaps in some years.”
Of course, all teams are set to put a lot of focus next year on the all-new cars which will have the ability to really shake up the order from 2022.