Carlos Sainz Jnr says McLaren still haven’t solved his car’s cooling problem and are “running out of things to try” after giving him a new chassis for this weekend’s race.
Last weekend Sainz had to use a different aerodynamic configuration to team mate Lando Norris as his car was running too hot. The difference in specification brought with it a lap time penalty.As well as giving Sainz a new chassis this weekend, McLaren also changed the build procedure for his car in an attempt to solve the problem. However despite lapping quicker than Norris in second practice, Sainz said his car is still running too hot.
“At the moment we haven’t really solved the issue,” he said. “We still see some discrepancies across the two cars, especially my car, we have less cooling. We are having to run still with more cooling on the car which costs quite a lot of lap time around here. So we’re still not fully into the bottom of the problem.
“We still need to keep searching because at the moment it’s a big question mark. We haven’t found [an answer] and we’ve changed pretty much everything on the car so we’re starting to run out of things to try. Hopefully we can find the last thing or the main thing that will give us the final answer but at the moment it’s tricky.”
McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl said that “in terms of pure performance” Sainz’s cooling problem “doesn’t really make a big difference”. However the compromises the team had to make with the car’s set-up have cost Sainz some lap time.
“With the car at Silverstone running two or three degrees hotter than the other car, it triggered exactly the threshold where we had to open up the bodywork on Carlos’ car. Which then was a downside on drag, downside on top speed and then also deficit in lap time.
“Obviously, we need to make sure that we get to the bottom of it and avoid that in the future. Because if you look now back at the first five races, especially on Carlos’ side, there was a lot of things happening on the pit stop side, like this temperature topic or the tyre blow-up in Silverstone which were out of his control, which caused him to lose a lot of points compared to Lando despite Carlos putting in some great performances in qualifying and also in the races. So it’s our task to do better here.”
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bosyber (@bosyber)
14th August 2020, 17:39
Must be frustrating for a formula1 team to not be able to analyze where the issue is like that! Good that Seidl supports his driver by making clear they are fully aware of how much it has been a frustration to his races too.
Balue (@balue)
14th August 2020, 20:34
Driving style? Seems about the only thing left. Hope this not something Sainz is continuing with in order to have an excuse for being beaten my his team mate, but I wouldn’t put it past him judging from his comments in F1 where the story is typically where he is great but let down by something else.
Alex Roy
15th August 2020, 3:35
Yes, agree with @balue. Carlos says he is “losing quite a lot of lap time”. Whereas the boss says it “doesn’t really make a bug difference”.
Nice excuses for being slow Carlos. Ferrari chose to deliberately ignore Ricciardo because he was too fast, and had to select a slower driver. Incredible – Ricciardo is too good, so Ferrari and Mercedes don’t want him because he will therefore upset their No.1s. Vettel fought tooth and nail and did everything in his (very substantial) power to keep Ricciardo from Ferrari, and then try to keep Leclerc in a Sauber, even though Leclerc had a contract. All the top teams have a No.1 policy, and Ricciardo doesn’t accept that rubbish. That’s why he beat Vettel in 2014, and why Webber failed in 2010. Webber got screwed by Red Bull, Marko and Horner.