Formula 1

F1: Seidl admits McLaren must “up their game”

McLaren’s Andreas Seidl has admitted the team must rebound after a difficult series of Grand Prix to limit the progress of the resurgent Alpine in the standings.

The Woking-based team has failed to keep the momentum that saw them soar up the standings, suffering a disastrous weekend in Montreal whilst rival teams Alfa Romeo and Alpine secured with both cars.

Speaking to motorsport.com, McLaren’s team principal outlined the team’s objectives for the British GP:

“Obviously a disappointing day for us, a highly disappointing weekend for various reasons. Reliability issues, an operational issue today in the race, but also in terms of pace, and where we want to be.

On the operation side during the pitstop today, we had a communications issue that was in the end snowballing into this issue that we have seen. We need to analyse and come back stronger.”

Whilst disappointing results are a part of competing at the highest level of motorsport, what will be of greatest concern to McLaren is their relative drop in performance.

McLaren has relied on efficiency to maximise their points this season, capitalising on Grand Prix like Australia and Imola when the MCL36 had pace, whilst also securing good points when they were less competitive in the midfield.

However, with Zhou Guanyu finding form for Alfa Romeo, and even reliability issues not keeping Alpine’s Alonso from the points, the papaya squad is suffering considerable losses, a trend they must reverse.

If you look at the last two races, there’s definitely a trend that we have been falling back compared to Alpine especially, and also some other cars were showing signs of strong improvements like the Astons on Friday.

So it is clear that we need to up our game in all areas, like I mentioned before, reliability, operations, performance, to make sure we stay in this battle for P4.”

As the year continues, development generally will slow down as teams switch their focus to 2023. This is no different for McLaren, who will look to optimise what they already have for the rest of the season.

“Our idea is obviously to keep learning about the car and apply these learnings in order to extract more out of the current package. 

So far, there’s no plans for any major upgrades for various reasons, including managing the cost cap as well.”

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