Brown admits: "We were over-excited" at the start of Renault partnership

Throughout McLaren's time with Honda, they suggested they had the best chassis on the grid. That's what they kept telling us. But as they moved to Renault, it was clear this wasn't the case. Zak Brown, McLaren's CEO finally admits the team were "over-excited".

Last season, McLaren struggled once again. By the end of the season, the papaya orange car finished sixth behind Haas and Renault.

Speaking to RaceFans at the launch of the 2019 car MCL34, Brown admitted McLaren expected too much of a sudden change when they fired up the Renault engine.

“Obviously when we made the change last year I think we were probably a little bit over-excited about how quickly we would return to the front. And we got that wrong," he said.

“So we’ve looked in the mirror to understand where we went wrong. We’ve made a lot of changes as all of you know both structurally, operationally – some new people – and so this is a very important year to show forward progress.”

McLaren admitted they found the problem just after the half-way point but claimed it was terminal and started testing on new parts ahead of the upcoming season.

While confirming he doesn't know how good they're going to be, Brown confirmed that the whole team have been working hard over the winter. Not only to build a new car but to understand what went wrong 12 months ago.

“And so it’s hard to know exactly how well you’re gonna do relative to everyone else but I think we worked hard in trying to understand some of the fundamental dynamics behind some of some of the issues and did our best to try and improve them," he added.