McLaren Racing Formula One Team Principal Andreas Seidl says that given where both Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo qualified they are happy to leave Baku with six points in bag following Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Speaking following the race, Seidl said:
Given our starting positions and the performance we had in our package this weekend, we are happy leaving Baku with six points for the team. Daniel and Lando worked together with the team and maximised all that was in our hands today. We knew before the race that, with our top-speed deficit at this track, we would struggle to overtake Alonso on track, which in the end didn’t allow us to progress further up the field despite trying a different strategy. We’ll keep working on understanding the car and see how we can optimise it further for the next race in Montreal, which is only a few days away.
“Thank you to the entire team here at track, back home at MTC and our colleagues at HPP, as well as Daniel and Lando for all the hard work again this weekend. I’d also like to thank our amazing fans for their continued support throughout this season so far, wherever we go. The whole team are working tirelessly to unlock more performance within our car, so that we can keep up the fight in the Constructors’ Championship. Next stop Canada.
Daniel Ricciardo started the race from P12 and came home in eighth place following a late race battle with his team-mate Lando Norris and speaking following th action he commented saying:
“I’m happy to have scored some points, obviously for the team and for myself – it’s been a while. It was an eventful race with split strategies, so at the beginning I was a bit quicker than Lando on the Hard tyre, and there were some team orders, and then at the end he was quicker on the Hard and there were further team orders. Ultimately, I don’t think we were quick enough to challenge Fernando, as even if we got close on the straight, he was just so quick. So, obviously we’ve got to try and take a bit of drag out the car. That was our Achilles’ heel here this weekend – but otherwise, I think we maximised our result. I’m happy to have had a smoother weekend.”
Lando Norris finished the race in ninth place and speaking following the event he commented saying:
“I’m as happy as I can be with that, we just got unlucky with a couple of positions as a result of others boxing under the VSC, which happens in Baku. It’s just a case of different strategies. So, we lost out a little bit on that, but the pace was good. We found it difficult to overtake with our package here, but the actual pace of the car was strong. I think today was the best we could achieve, all things considered. But of course, we want more, so we’ll keep working on our weaknesses and aim for a better performance next time out in Montreal.”