How far away are McLaren's facility updates?

McLaren CEO Zak Brown says several of the team's major Formula 1 infrastructure upgrades are about to be delivered.

The Woking-based squad have been upgrading their wind tunnel and simulator as they seek a return to regularly contending for wins and titles, after having taken just one Grand Prix victory in 10 years, and no championships since 2008.

Former Team Principal Andreas Seidl had highlighted the need to upgrade the wind tunnel at the McLaren Technology Centre shortly after taking over in 2019, as the outdated facility had led to the team using the Toyota tunnel in Cologne.

"Our wind tunnel is just about ready to come online. The belt's rolling, the air is going, so it's been calibrated," Brown told media, including RacingNews365.com.

"Our new manufacturing unit, with all-new state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment, you can walk in and you can see the buildings and a lot of other infrastructure that we were quite far behind on that we invested in.

"We then got stalled during COVID on progressing some of that just from the world being shut down, so things like the wind tunnel obviously would have been done earlier."

Brown hints at more to come – "We're just getting started"

In recent weeks, there has been considerable upheaval at McLaren, with Technical Director James Key leaving his role to be replaced by a three-pronged design team comprising David Sanchez, who is to join from Ferrari, and existing McLaren employees Peter Prodromou and Neil Houldley.

Team Principal Andrea Stella only assumed his new role in January, having been promoted from within to replace the Audi-bound Seidl, and Brown sounded a confident note as to McLaren's future prospects.

"We have all the resources we need. We've got two great racing drivers, a great history in the sport, and a tonne of enthusiasm and excitement," said Brown.

"We're head down, highly motivated, and we've got a lot of people that have joined us, and a lot of people that are in the process of joining us, and now that Andrea has put the model in place, we're not done turbocharging that model. We're just getting started."