Andreas Seidl openly admits that his McLaren F1 Team did not start the 2022 Formula 1 season in the way they would have wanted, with neither Daniel Ricciardo nor Lando Norris finding themselves in the battle for the points in last Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix.
Ricciardo ended fourteenth and Norris just behind in fifteenth, leaving McLaren as one of only four teams not to score points in Bahrain, and they struggled for pace and performance throughout the weekend at the Bahrain International Circuit.
However, McLaren have an immediate chance to turn around their fortunes as Formula 1 moves to the Jeddah Corniche Circuit for the second Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, and Seidl, the Team Principal at the Woking-based squad, says everyone is working extremely hard to fix the problems that have left them floundering towards the back of the pack so far in 2022.
“The Bahrain Grand Prix was not how we wanted to start the season,” said Seidl. “It’s clear that we have work to do, so we’ll be working hard to bring more performance to the car as quickly as possible.
“The team are analysing our performance from Bahrain so that we can learn and improve, already starting in Jeddah.”
Seidl says the team must remain focused and they continue to learn and understand the new-for-2022 cars, and he wants to see how they fare this weekend in Saudi Arabia.
“It’s only the second race with these new cars and the new race weekend format so we must stay focused on all operational aspects,” he said. “We’re looking forward to going racing again in just a couple of days’ time.
“Jeddah is an exciting track with some great features so it will be interesting to see how the new regulation cars run. Let’s get back on track and keep pushing.”
