Every Formula 1 team seems to be playing down their chances this season but McLaren’s Zak Brown has gone the other way.

The American CEO saw his team put in one of the best displays of any constructor in 2023, barely stepping off the podium in the second half of the season.

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri proved to be the best driver pairing on the grid, with the latter even winning a sprint race in Qatar.

Arguably the best performer on the grid after champion Max Verstappen, Norris finished second more than any other driver in 2023, and could well have taken his first race win with slightly more luck.

All of that is despite the fact McLaren started the season in disarray, at the back of the grid and in crisis.

Now with a new wind tunnel in operation and continued improvement, Brown thinks 2024 could be even better for his team, depending on what the opposition do.

Asked by talkSPORT how distant race wins are, he said: “I don’t think they’re far away.

“We’ve had another good off season but you never know what the other nine teams have done.

“We certainly have drivers capable of winning races and we certainly have a team capable of winning races and the second half of last year we had a race car that was pretty close to winning races.

“We’ve built a faster race car in the off season so we’ll have to wait and see, we don’t know what the other teams have done but winning is certainly our ambition.