McLaren’s Andreas Seidl claims the team’s compromises cost them the MCL36’s further development

McLaren’s Andreas Seidl claims the team’s compromises cost them the MCL36’s further development

McLaren's Boss, Andreas Seidl

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McLaren‘s MCL36, which looked one of the most powerful during the first pre-season testing of the 2022 season, started terribly, and the woes for the team do not seem to be ending soon. Andreas Seidl, the team principal, reveals how recent issues have cost the development of the car.

Seidl, as quoted by the Italian website of Motorsport.com, said, “We are still racing with an interim solution dedicated to the brakes, at least at the moment, because with the short time we had available, it was the only reliable solution we could adopt on the cars. This is certainly not optimal in terms of performance.”

The first problem with the overheating brakes for McLaren was observed during the pre-season testing in Bahrain. The car couldn’t run for long, and the same was observed in Bahrain, where their performance suffered. However, due to Jeddah being a fast track, Lando Norris performed better, whereas Daniel Ricciardo was doing better than in the season opener but had to retire his car due to power issues.

McLaren boss on how recent issues spelled trouble for car’s development

McLaren's CEO Zak Brown and Team Principal Andreas Seidl
McLaren’s CEO Zak Brown and Team Principal Andreas Seidl

Braking issues seem to be only the small piece of trouble pie that McLaren is chewing right now. With a budget cap in place for the second year, the team, according to Andreas Seidl, had to use resources from the car’s future development on the issues at hand, hence a major compromise. 

He said, “Obviously the intensive work we had to do after experiencing the current problems cost us some resources that we would have liked to use for performance development. So it was certainly not ideal and I would say it forced us to make some compromises and has caused delays in improving the performance of the car.”

McLaren’s issues at hand are beyond the braking system, as they still lack the grip and the downforce, as per Seidl. While the team is speeding up to improve, it won’t be until the mid-season till we see significant improvement in the pace and consistency of the car.

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