McLaren must “get back to scoring the results that are on the table” – Seidl

2021 Sao Paulo Grand Prix

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[raceweekendpromotion]McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl says they are failing to maximise their points-scoring opportunities as successfully as they did in the first half of the season.

Ferrari has overtaken the team in the fight for third place in the constructors championship. McLaren has lost 49 points to its rival over the last four races.

Seidl admitted the points swing has done serious damage to the team’s hopes of repeating the third place it scored last year.

“Clearly we have to face the reality,” he said. “If everything goes well for Ferrari now until the end of season, it’ll be difficult.

“At the same time, as long as it’s theoretically possible – I’ve seen several times this year obviously what can happen at a race weekend – we will try to hang in there.”

The team has taken just one point from each of the last two races. Daniel Ricciardo failed to score in either – he was sidelined by a loss of power linked to a chassis crack at Interlagos – while Lando Norris finished tenth each time. Norris showed encouraging pace in Saturday’s sprint qualifying race, but suffered a puncture on the first lap of the grand prix and fell to the back.

“It’s important now to get back to simply scoring the results that are on the table for us,” Seidl reflected. “I think also in the last two race weekends where we didn’t have the strongest car in this battle we were in, [it was] still possible to score good results. This is what we didn’t manage that we need to do better.”

However even if the team is unable to beat Ferrari to third in the championship, Seidl believes fourth place will be a good result for McLaren this year.

“I guess before the start of the season if someone would have said we’d finish in F1 P4 this year I probably would have taken it. But at the same time we are racers. If we get close to P3, we have led the championship [against Ferrari] for quite a bit this season, we want to battle for this P3.

“In terms of what we deserve as a team, if you are in P4 you deserve to be P4. It’s the same as last year when we were in P3 we deserved to be P3 because we were the third-best team.”

Ferrari’s resurgence this year, aided by the recent introduction of a power unit upgrade, was to be expected, said Seidl.

“It’s not a surprise that a team like Ferrari, after the specifically bad year they had last year, is coming back strongly. In the end they just get back to where you expect them to be with the experience they are having, with the people they are having, the results they’re having with the drivers. So I would say that’s not a surprise.”

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2021 Sao Paulo Grand Prix

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10 comments on “McLaren must “get back to scoring the results that are on the table” – Seidl”

  1. This has definitely been the most disappointing part of the last couple of race weekends. I’ve been so impressed by how McLaren handled most of this season (minus RIC’s protracted difficulties adjusting to his car) up until now.

    Suddenly, however, they seem like a different team.

    I wonder what’s going on behind closed doors. Are these Audi rumors a sign of business-related goings on that are upsetting the good vibes at McLaren and having a knock-on effect at the track?

    1. I think Mclaren’s last two races have been ruined because of great starts, they seem to be the best on the grid when it comes to getting off the line but then it’s come unstuck. In my opinion I’d say not really the drivers fault either, Lando had to go to the grass and got squeezed by Sainz and Bottas should have been well gone by the time Dan got to the corner. In reality I think given a slight change in fate they both could have been really good weekends for McLaren.

      1. So it was Sainz that squeezed Lando and not Lando that squeezed Sainz…

  2. McLaren, please replace with new Mercedes ICE engine and turn up the engine mode.

  3. Current Mclaren is a mockery of its glory days. Its sad to see Ron Dennis’s legacy be dumped on like this.
    Ron transformed the team from a Garagista based in a dump industrial unit near heathrow to the state of the art Woking based operation that was the envy of the grid spawning multiple championships and legendary drivers. Now the team consists of dank memelord Landobot and Zak Brown who is a WISH dot com version of Ron..
    Sadly the team has declined due to multiple factors most notably Ron Dennis being ousted from the company, Lewis Hamilton and key Personnel being pushed out of the team and the ‘Americanization’ of McLaren by Zak Brown who does not deserve to tie Rons’ shoe laces.

    History of McLarens decline:
    The rot started when clueless Martin Whitmarsh was running the F1 side of operations over a decade ago as Ron let Martin take over when he was focusing more on the business side most notably the MP4-12C road car development and construction of the new production centre back in Woking. Without Ron to protect his prodigy against the politics in the team Martin clearly prioritized his personal friend the less talented Jenson Button over Lewis(Martin suggested donating merc engines to help Button at brawn in 2009, went out of his way to sign him for 2010 season, gave him Lewis’s engineers, built the cars around him to suit his tall frame plus stiff understeery characteristics that complimented his driving style).
    Eventually Martin and Button turned most of the team against ‘moody’ Lewis and made things unbearably toxic that Lewis was forced out of the team at the end of 2012 moving to then mid table Mercedes..
    Also other key personal sick of the politics jumped ship with Lewis most notably Paddy Lowe which was a massive blow to McLaren.
    Ron Dennis tried to fix the destruction Martin caused and took a risky gamble on a Honda partnership that sadly failed due to the Japanese giant needing at least 2 more years development of the turbo hybrid engine. The meme worthy Honda partnership triggered a series of management and stakeholder backstabbing which forced Ron Dennis out of the company and the rest is history.

    TL;DR Toxic environment at McLaren and politicking forcing out key personal is responsible for the sharp decline and I doubt it will change anytime soon with the clueless management that’s currently in place.

    1. The same management that has seen them progress from a back of the grid team to one that has a 1 2 finish this year. They’ve had a couple of bad races, the next three should suit the car. Seidl will push McLaren to be constant podium contenders.

  4. Maybe trying to make the car more suitable to Ricciardo wasn’t that good idea. Norris seems to be nowhere in last races.

    1. Building a car that only suits drivers that have only ever been used to that particular style of driving isn’t a sustainable method of development.

      1. Didn’t the same thing happen to Lando last year? Stella start of the year then ho-hum, nothing bad, just not brilliant. Without the 1st lap issue last weekend he could have been in the hunt.

    2. Are they doing that – what’s the source?

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