The McLaren F1 Team Principal Andreas Seidl has apologised publicly to Daniel Ricciardo after a power loss early on in the Styrian Grand Prix lead to a poor result for the Australian on Sunday.
Ricciardo started in thirteenth and by the end of the first lap made it all the way up to ninth, looking set for a stormer that would finally kickstart his season with McLaren. Very soon afterwards a power loss issue with his engine meant he dropped back to his starting posistion, where he stayed, stuck behind the Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN of Kimi Räikkönen until the end of the race.
“We still end the weekend with some mixed feelings as today felt like a little bit of a missed opportunity,” said Seidl.
“Daniel had a great start from P13 to P9 in the early stages, but then a temporary loss of power meant four cars overtook him, which pretty much ended his race… Daniel, sorry for that.”
Ricciardo remained optimistic after starting and finishing thirteenth, despite running as high as P9 during the race. The Australian was able to recover from the power failure, but after losing four positions in succession, his race was effectively over.
“The start was great, we got up to ninth, put ourselves in a really good position on the medium tyre and the race was looking up from there, and then we lost power.
“We were able to fix it on the steering wheel, but everything we gained, we then lost, and we were back where we started. After that, it was difficult to make moves being in dirty air.”
Team-mate Lando Norris was able to convert his third-place start into a fifth place finish, something that Ricciardo says was within his reach.
“I feel we should’ve been fifth and sixth again today as we were last week… We’ll reset over the next few days and come back again and make it happen next week – hopefully our luck turns.”
Norris not excited by Styrian performance
Lando Norris did not seem to be overly happy with the performance of himself, his team and his car after taking P5 in the Styrian Grand Prix.
The Briton has improved so much this season that we are now no longer surprised to see him finish as the best of the rest, and that was the case once more at Spielberg. Starting third on the grid, Norris was able to keep Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas behind him in the early stages thanks to his faster Soft Tyres, while Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton raced off into the distance.
Nevertheless Norris’ consistency – he has finished fifht in all of the last three races – means he remains fourth in the Drivers Championship.
“A good race, quite straightforward – there wasn’t too much going on from my side, but that was also a good thing. We weren’t under too much pressure from the cars behind, and the cars in front of us were too far ahead, which we expected.“
In the end Norris is a team player, and despite his innate instinct to want to win everything he possibly can, the young man from Bristol realises his team isn’t quite there to challenge for that yet and is happy as long as they’re on the right track.
“We can be happy – P5 is still a very good result for us. Hopefully, we can come back and do the same again next week.”
