Stoffel Vandoorne was left frustrated after another horror day at the Hockenheimring left him at the very back of the field in Qualifying for the German Grand Prix.
The McLaren F1 Team racer has not been competitive this weekend, and has been well adrift of team-mate Fernando Alonso, and in all sessions held in dry conditions has been twentieth and last, including Saturday’s Qualifying effort.
Vandoorne says he ‘definitely hasn’t forgotten to drive’ and it is some kind of car issue that has caused his drop in performance, and the team are seeking a solution to just why the Belgian has fallen so far off the pace despite having a similar set-up to his team-mate, who will start the race up in eleventh.
“The situation today was the same as at Silverstone,” said Vandoorne. “Since we hit the ground there we were the last car by some margin, and it’s turned out the same today and all weekend so far. It’s frustrating as we’ve changed a lot of parts on the car to try and fix the problems, but we haven’t yet managed to find a solution.
“I definitely haven’t forgotten how to drive. Between me and Fernando the cars are in a similar spec, but we can see some issues on the data on my side. The team has put in a lot of effort to change parts already, but it seems like we’re not really moving forward much and the team is looking at various options to see what else we can do. The priority now is to find a solution for the problem we have.”
Vandoorne admits he will have nothing to lose on Sunday, where he will start nineteenth thanks to Daniel Ricciardo’s grid penalty, and he hopes to be able to extract more performance from the MCL33 than he has been able to so far this weekend.
“Tomorrow I have nothing to lose, so the only way is up from here and hopefully we can extract a little bit more out of it,” said the Belgian.
