With third place, McLaren was able to achieve a good result in qualifying at Imola and placed about where it was expected after the tests in Barcelona. There, the racing team presented itself in good early form before the big disappointment followed at the season opener in Bahrain.
But according to team boss Andreas Seidl, McLaren was simply beaten completely below value in Sachir. This can also be seen in the results of the following races. In Saudi Arabia Lando Norris finished seventh, in Australia two weeks ago the two drivers finished fifth and sixth.
“We had a decent test in Barcelona with a car that basically worked,” says Seidl. “But then we had the big setback in Bahrain.”
In the second week of testing, McLaren had to do without Daniel Ricciardo, who was suffering from COVID-19. However, that was not the reason why the racing team was able to do the fewest laps by far – just under half as many as Mercedes, for example.
“We lost a lot of laps”
McLaren was plagued by major braking problems and had to come up with an emergency solution for the opener in order to be able to drive at all. “We lost a lot of laps and an ideal preparation for the start of the season with a completely new car,” said the team boss.
“And then having the race on the same course as the test, where everyone learned a lot, definitely made us look worse than we actually are with the package,” said Seidl. McLaren had no chance, got stuck with one car in Q1 and ended up only finishing 14th and 15th.
McLaren MCL36 “not fundamentally wrong”
Things looked better in Jeddah and Melbourne. “The more laps we drove, the more we were able to recover from the laps lost in testing,” says the German. “So part of the performance just came back because it was in the car anyway.”
According to the team boss, there is “nothing fundamentally wrong” with the McLaren MCL36, but he is aware that there is still some performance missing from the top teams. “The car is good enough to fight for the top 10 and points every weekend. That’s the goal at the moment as we work on the updates we want to bring in the future.”