McLaren F1 Team driver Stoffel Vandoorne has said the team’s race at Hockenheimring was “very strange”, with the Belgian starting the race eighteenth, after penalties for Daniel Ricciardo and Pierre Gasly, and finishing thirteenth.
The British team has had an abysmal season, changing their engine supplier from Honda to Renault in the hope it would bring better results, but Vandoorne has failed to score a top ten finish since the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in April.
Vandoorne has scored an abysmal eight points in the first eleven races, while his team-mate, two time World Champion Fernando Alonso has scored a total of forty points in the same period.
“It was a very strange race. We had a terrible first part, when were almost last – as we’ve been most of this week to be honest,” said Vandoorne. “We had an engine issue; we thought we had to retire the car but then we found some setting to make it work again, even though with a little lower power than normal, but at least it got ourselves back in the race.
“When the rain came down we took the right decision by not pitting for Intermediate tyres, which got ourselves up a few positions. Thirteenth was probably the best position we could’ve gained today.”
Vandoorne and the team are now putting the German Grand Prix behind them and ensuring they have the car set up correctly for the next race of the season in Hungary.
“The most important thing now is changing things around on my car and arriving in Hungary with a normal car,” said Vandoorne.
It seems that the days where the team were fighting for championships and podiums are now long gone, as they often struggle to get both cars to the end of a race.
Alonso also had a bad race in Germany, having to retire his car at the end of the race due to an undisclosed issue, although he was still classified as finishing in sixteenth place.
