The race is on and McLaren joined the 2020 party by launching the new Renault-en-engined MCL-35 in an event at the McLaren Technology Centre today.

But has the team made a car that will allow Carlos

Sites Jr. and Lando Norris to continue their strong form. I'm your host, Ed Sture, and joining

me today is special guest Lawrence Barreto from F1.com, and we'll also be hearing Gary Anderson's

technical analysis of the new car. So Lawrence, here we are at the McLaren Technology Centre shortly after the launch. Great feeling of optimism here. Last year it was all about humility, but now it's all about excitement, isn't it? This is a team on the up. It's so refreshing. I think you walk around this place, and we've been fortunate that we could spend a couple of hours here, and you get to meet a lot of the staff who work here, and they happy. They're excited. They're confident and that's not something you could say about McLaren employees for many years with the tough times during Honda. So I think there is a lot of optimism around here and even today the car launch, it was a proper car launch. There was a car. And I think that's a good thing, but they didn't go over go over the top you know it was all about the car no acrobatics this is the car and this is what we want to achieve and focus on this year yeah very much so very very focused I'm slightly surprised because you're a man famous for your dramatic trousers and you've gone with kind of old school McLaren sort of a silvery grey trouser colour. I'm disappointed you. Do you not

have any papaya? Matt's, Matt's papaya. That's what colour the car is now. That's probably one

colour that's not in my current clothing palette. So maybe I need to change that. And I haven't

got my yellow shoes on today. So that's probably disappointing to you too, Ed. Yeah, you're not as

on brand as hope. But it is, it is interesting with McLaren because last year it was all about humility, wasn't it? They kept using that word after some terrible times. But today the messaging is very different. They're not ridiculously optimistic, but they are sort of cautiously, sensibly optimistic. Obviously, they're talking about the long term aim to get back to the front. They know that's not going to happen this year, but there's been some areas of the car that have changed

to try and unlock that potential. So it does seem also a team that not only has made progress,

but it's also kind of got that assuredness back in that they know where they're going,

they know what they're trying to achieve. I think it's that feeling that they are portraying confidence, but they've got like a solid foundation to base that on. And I feel like last year they spent a lot of time building on the building blocks that they'd put in at the start of the year. Then we, as they went through the year, they got results and they got fortune. But it was fortune that was deserved. That podium in Brazil, yeah, fine. It wasn't based on pure performance. But it was something that was deserved for the fact that they had just been improving race on race all throughout the year. Looking at the car this year, it looks a little bit more aggressive and it feels like they're taking another step forward. And Zach Brown talked today about turning a corner.

And I think that's interesting because it's the first time, like you were saying earlier,

that they feel like they've maybe got out of that initial holding pattern

where they were just trying to find themselves again.

It's just a real buzz around here, a real excitement,

but based on pure data and feeling, I think, that they've been building on. Well, we had a lengthy press conference after with Zach Brown and the rest of his leadership team, and he said that he feels kind of everything's in place. And of course, Andreas Seidle, a team principal, James Keith and technical director, they weren't on board at this stage last year. They hadn't started work. so again that that kind of solidity all these

strategic moves that the team's making there's some questions to London Norris about the

next generation simulator they're working on we know they've got for down the line the new

wind tunnel so just that sure-footedness which is which is really encouraging about

and you did mention the car and you can see even though i think james key called it called

the the mcel 34 last year's, the father of the concept of the car, but, you know, tighter packaging at the rear, the side pods, etc., some geometry checks. So this is sort of the step in the right direction, a little bit of greater complexity in the car, which is exactly what you see from the top three teams. And I think they've done that, or they've been able to do that because they've built confidence from last year. I think they've been able to feel like this is a stepping stone from last year. If last year was terrible, they'd have to really start again from scratch, and they don't really want to do that, especially in a year when they're going to have to change things up for 2021 next year. You can see from the way that James and Andreas and Zach kind of interacts,

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