Zak Brown says fans of the McLaren F1 Team cannot expect any miracles across the final seven races after his admission that the Woking-based team has produced an ‘extremely poor race car’ in 2018.
The team sit sixth in the Constructors’ Championship but have only scored sixteen points in the past ten races, with Stoffel Vandoorne in particularly struggling having failed to score anything since the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in April. Even the talent of Fernando Alonso has failed to see the car shine, with the MCL33’s best finish coming in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
Brown, the CEO of McLaren, says the team has been outperformed and out-developed in 2018, which has seen a promising start to the year turn into a struggle just to get out of Q1, however they will continue to develop the MCL33 in an attempt to solve the problems it currently has.
“We’ll continue to push on this car but unfortunately we’ve produced an extremely poor race car that is not that responsive to changes, which will tell you that inherently we don’t have a good race car,” said Brown to Motorsport.com.
“I would expect, unfortunately, similar type of results – maybe a little more circuit-specific – over the balance of the year. I certainly wouldn’t expect any miracles.
“Other teams have developed at a faster pace than ourselves. It appears we’ve gone backwards. In reality, everyone else has gone forwards, but in Formula 1 if you’re not going forwards you’re going backwards.
“We knew Spa and Monza-type circuits would be our absolute weak points in the car, which are proving to be the case. We’re not giving up on developing because we’re identifying the issues and want to see if we’re able to solve them.”
