Oscar Piastri says McLaren should be “very optimistic” that it can catch Red Bull Racing if it continues developing at the same rate it did in his breakout 2023 campaign.

McLaren emerged spectacularly from more than a decade in the doldrums halfway through last year, when a major upgrade package turned the car from a backmarker into a podium contender overnight.

The rate of development accelerated through the season, with the team picking up a pair of double podiums and Piastri winning the sprint race in Qatar.

Speaking at the team’s season launch overnight, Piastri said the team’s continued sharp development trajectory during the off-season left him optimistic that it could match Red Bull Racing more frequently in 2024.

“I think you have to have the optimism that we can beat them,” he said. “We got very close at certain times with some success in certain sessions.

“If we can keep the same rate of development, I think we can be very optimistic.”

Teammate Lando Norris was similarly upbeat, though he warned beating the battle-hardened Red Bull Racing team over the course of a campaign in a championship fight would be more difficult than pinching victories.

“If you were to say, ‘Are they beatable?’, you’re going to have to say yes,” he said. “I think we’re going to want to believe to say yes, because we were very close at certain times, and at certain times we did beat them.

“The question is: can we beat them over a season? Because I think that’s going to be the challenging thing, and I think that’s going to be very difficult to do with how well they’re performing.

“I’m optimistic. Possible to beat them at certain times? I want to believe so, yeah.”

Team principal Andrea Stella, under whose watch McLaren has been revitalised since his elevation to the top job last year, was similarly buoyant about his team’s chances, though he expected Red Bull Racing to be quickest out of the blocks in Bahrain.

“I think at the start of the season my expectation is that Red Bull will keep enjoying some advantage,” he said. “I say this because they didn’t develop the car very much last year, and I would think it’s reasonable to expect that they will have accumulated some knowledge and development last year that will be capitalised onto the 2024 car. That’s my expectation.

“Having said that, I think looking at ourselves, looking at McLaren, if — and I say if — we keep the development rate that we had in 2023 … then I think we can be in a strong position.

“Whether that’s enough to challenge Red Bull and the other top teams that certainly will have made good improvements, we will find out.

“We think that this is a strong development rate, but like I said, it’s now up to us to try and consolidate over time.”

It’s not a given that McLaren will have the chance to take the fight to Red Bull Racing on its own despite ending 2023 as arguably the most competitive of the chasing pack.

While the British team is evolving its successful late-2023 design, both Mercedes and Ferrari have launched completely new cars that could shake up last year’s established order, while Aston Martin believes it can recapture the podium-getting form displayed this time last year.

“I think we also have to be aware that it’s not just Red Bull we’re fighting,” Piastri warned. “We were in a very intense battle with Mercedes and Ferrari, especially in the second half of the year, in terms of championship points.

“In the second half of the season it was incredibly close between us, and we’re all teams that have had a lot of success at various stages.

“I think we have to be wary it’s not just Red Bull that we’re fighting. I think there’ll be other top teams that are making progress as well.”

With just two years remaining under this set of regulations before the introduction of a new rule book in 2026, Stella believes teams will start to see a flattening of their development rates and a closing of the performance gaps, which should make the fight for podiums and wins more competitive.

“This is the first year with these new regulations that, based on what we have seen in the early photographs of the cars, the macroscopic shapes seem to be starting to converge,” he said.

“At the same time, a lot of the performance is actually in the details and in the millimetre game, so … the fact that the cars have started to look similar [doesn’t necessarily] mean that performance will converge. But certainly this could be a first important factor. I would expect some of this convergence.”

Stella added, however, that McLaren’s rate of development hasn’t yet begun to slow, perhaps because the team has been able to build on last year’s car rather than roll the dice on an all-new design that could trigger teething problems.

The trajectory leaves the team optimistic that it could close the gap faster than its main rivals.

“I think this year we will see that adding lap time will start to have some diminishing returns, I would say, for the first time with this new regulation,” he explained.

“For two years we have seen progress of especially aerodynamic development being quite steep, but now I would anticipate that towards the end of the season it will become harder for designers to be able to keep a very steep development rate.

“This is why I said before that we can be competitive if we are able to keep the development rate that we have experienced over the last 12 months.”

McLaren undertook a shakedown of the new MCL38 at Silverstone on Wednesday ahead of pre-season testing in Bahrain on 21–23 February.