Even if Racing Point seems ahead in pure performance, McLaren is still in contention for 3rd place in the constructors’ standings, and even has the luxury of being ahead of its great rival Ferrari. Woking was notably able to maximize his start to the season, with Lando Norris’ podium in the first race.
Credited by Zak Brown for the turnaround in the team’s performance, Andreas Seidl, McLaren F1 team manager, spoke about McLaren’s level of competitiveness. He refuses any excitement but evokes results “Encouraging” for the future.
“Looking at all of those first six races, I’m just happy that we were able to take a good step forward with last year’s car. “
“It’s encouraging to see, when you make the comparisons with last year’s car, this good step forward that we were able to take, which just confirms that we are going in the right direction at home with development, with joint work between the racing team and the factory team, etc. “
“I’m also very happy with the way we’re working together here on the track, but at the same time there’s no reason to get excited because we know we still have a long way to go. “
“We have a clear plan to put in place what we still lack in order to become a better team and that is what we are working on and the results are obviously a great motivation to do so. “
As Seidl acknowledges, McLaren took advantage of the setbacks of other teams at the start of the season: the double retirement of Red Bull in Austria, and of course the impressive drop in competitiveness of the Scuderia. However, is there room for improvement at the operational level?
“Of course, there have already been situations this year where we could have done better in terms of small gains probably: on strategic choices, pit stops, etc. but that’s normal and that’s part of the game. “
“It’s important to start from each circuit by analyzing what we could have done better without also pointing the finger at someone, if something goes wrong. This should be used as an opportunity to just do better next time. “
“That’s how we are in the team. We have that spirit that we see and that really has a chance to improve as a team. “
“We also have to say that at the end, especially for the first two races in Austria – especially for the first where we managed a podium – we also benefited from the problems of other cars or teams that just didn’t finished the race or who did not show the full potential that their cars had; sometimes you are in the positive, sometimes you are in the negative. “
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