“Just not good enough,” Andreas Seidl distraught with McLaren’s ‘below-average’ performance

McLaren was off the pace during the Austria Qualifying and team Principal Andreas Seidl has given brief details into what exactly went on with the two papaya-colored cars during an extremely disappointing Qualifying session.

Andreas Seidl has revealed that his team suffered from a range of reliability issues yesterday and according to him, that pegged them back on the starting grid for today’s Sprint race.

Lando Norris was only able to do a 14-lap run during FP1 as he came to halt on the track after his new Mercedes power engine gave in. For Quali, the Brit’s car was fitted with an older engine but after suffering a brake-by-wire issue during Q2, his session came to an end.

On the other side of the garage, Daniel Ricciardo had another terrible day behind the wheel of the MCL36 as he went out of Qualifying at the end of the Q1 session. Moreover, it is believed that Ricciardo suffered from a DRS issue that compromised his single-lap pace.

Seidl while talking about McLaren said, “Just not good enough today, we need to get to the bottom of this and make sure we eliminate all these different issues as quick as possible.”

“If you look at FP1, on Daniel’s side we had a DRS issue which compromised our run plan. We couldn’t go through the full programme as we were focused on solving the DRS issue.“

“On Lando’s side, unfortunately, after installing a new PU for this weekend we had a power loss. It’s something we still have to investigate together with our colleagues from Mercedes.”

“Still we managed to get both cars ready for qualifying. But then right away from the first outing, we experienced a brake-by-wire issue on Lando’s side, which didn’t allow him to push the car to the limit, give him confidence, and then didn’t allow him to set any meaningful lap time in Q2.”

“It is a shame because I think the lap time he could set in Q1 you could see the potential we had for the package today.”

“But then that doesn’t count if you don’t get it together as a team.”

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Andreas Seidl: The goal is still the same, we can still do it.

Daniel Ricciardo was signed by McLaren with the hope of building a strong driver lineup, but since his arrival, things haven’t turned out the way the team or he himself wanted.

Seidl while talking about Ricciardo said, “He struggled to extract the performance that Lando could extract with the car which was a shame.”

“Unfortunately, the field is so close together that meant he couldn’t progress into Q1, which is obviously a bad outcome for today, being P15 and P16 after qualifying.”

“Luckily, we have a sprint race tomorrow. Because I think we’re the package we have here, if we get our reliability issues sorted, we should definitely be in a position to move up then in a better position for the race on Sunday.“

“The goal is still the same. We still can do it.”

Seidl when asked about Ricciardo was quick to divert the attention from him as he stressed how the team is underperforming in various departments.

“We need to stay calm and keep working together in order to see what we can do on the car side in order to help him get more out of the car, which we’re doing.”

“Daniel is very critical about himself as well, which is good.”

“In the end, we have to do a better job as a team. Give him a more reliable car, then we can also do the practice sessions as we want to do them to get through the full programme.”

“We need to get, in general, the car performance more up. And then I’m sure both drivers are in a position to score good results.”

“In the end, it was down to us as a team that we didn’t give him the full free practice session.”

“That’s what I’m focused on in order to make sure as a team we do a better job next time.”

Andreas Seidl just like everybody else on the team is extremely disappointed with how yesterday panned out for them but still, he has faith that during the Sprint race, his drivers would be able to make a difference and get the team up on the grid for Sunday’s Grand Prix

The sprint format is fast-paced and given the reliability issues that the team faced yesterday, it is going to be of utmost importance for McLaren to get on top of those issues, otherwise, they could be in for another painful outing today.

Would they be able to get their elbows out during the Austria Qualifying?

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