Andreas Seidl revealed that he is “very satisfied” with the development of the McLaren car for the 2022 Formula 1 season. The Woking team principal admitted in an interview on the Formel1.de YouTube channel that the design and engineering sections had some complications with the next MCL36 because “they don’t have any reference”.
“You try to set yourself ambitious but also realistic goals as a team,” Seidl said. “From my point of view, I am very satisfied with the evolution I see at the moment, the car is responding to the updates.
“We are making progress week by week in the wind tunnel. How much all that work will be worth in the end, we will only see in the first qualifying in Bahrain,” the McLaren team manager commented.
Seidl does not set a specific goal about the position they could occupy in the constructors’ standings in 2022. “For me, the most important thing is that the development of this car is once again a step forward compared to the developments of the last few years. “.
The trend of recent years is encouraging for McLaren . In 2017, the team finished the world championship in ninth place, while in 2018, they switched from Honda to Renault engines. With the new power units, the Woking team improved even further, rising from sixth in 2018 to fourth in 2019, the first year under Seidl’s stewardship.
In 2020, McLaren reached third position, and last year, in the British return to Mercedes engines, they finished fourth, 48.5 points behind Ferrari , but 120 points ahead of Alpine. The restructuring led by Seidl is bearing fruit: “More than two years ago we made a major readjustment in the team, in terms of organization and structure.
Those from Woking do not plan any major changes at the moment: “I am absolutely convinced that we have all the talent on board that we need to take the next steps. Now we need time, we have to work together every day and learn from the things that They haven’t gone in the ideal way to grow from that.”
McLaren fell from third to fourth in the championship, but for Seidl it is more significant that it has narrowed the gap to Mercedes and Red Bull, despite the fact that they had to give up one of the two allowed development tokens for the switch to motorsport. Mercedes.
The manager of the English team believes that they deserve “great praise” for the fact that the engineers “managed to take a step forward with the car”, and indicated that the specific cost of giving up a token was “difficult to express in terms of lap time or performance.
