McLaren confirm 2023 launch date after social media tease

McLaren have confirmed the launch of their 2023 car will be on February 13, joining Aston Martin on that day.

The Woking-based have become one of five teams to reveal the launch date for their 2023 car alongside Aston Martin, Alpine, Ferrari and AlphaTauri all having set February dates.

McLaren have confirmed the car will be shown to the world for the first time on February 13, the same day as Aston Martin and the day before Ferrari.

Last season, McLaren unveiled three cars at a single event at the McLaren Technology Centre with the Formula 1, Extreme E and IndyCar entrants being seen publicly for the first time.

The new car, will be the first to be driven by Oscar Piastri with the young Australian replacing his countryman Daniel Ricciardo as Lando Norris’ team-mate.

McLaren will be hoping the new car provides significantly fewer problems than the 2022 edition but did admit that a brake problem seen at the start of last season will have knock-on effects going into 2023.

The team began pre-season testing in the worst possible fashion with Ricciardo missing due to a positive COVID test leaving Norris to do all three days of testing, during which a brake issue appeared that had not shown up in the simulator or the wind tunnel.

Speaking before he departed for Sauber, former McLaren team principal told Speedcafe.com that it had put them on the “back foot” and would have an impact on the 2023 car.

“It had quite a consequence for us as a team for different reasons,” Seidl said.

“Obviously, with testing being so limited nowadays, and going into a completely new era of Formula 1, completely new cars, then missing out on half of the testing compared to everyone else around, compared to all other competitors, definitely put us on the back foot quite a lot in terms of preparation for the season.

“Then we had to use a lot of resources as well at a time where we would have liked to use all the resources simply to performance develop the car instead of fixing brake issues was also something that, I think, put us on the back foot even further and, to a certain degree, probably even had an impact on next year’s car because we couldn’t start it as early as we would have liked.”

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