Formula 1 premiered the Jeddah circuit in the 2021 season and, as expected, it is a very fast track where single-seaters pass just a few millimeters from the walls. This means that the teams have to fine-tune the car in order to get the most out of it and achieve a good result.
One of those who tried to do it was McLaren, however, as Andreas Seidl himself, one of the most important members of the Woking team, pointed out, the Saudi Arabian street layout is not the one that best suits the MCL35 .
Before arriving, the papaya hoped to be strong in a place where the engine and top speed would have a lot of relevance, as happened in Monza , where they got the only double of 2021 so far.
One of its drivers, Lando Norris, could only be 7th in the classification of Jeddah, remaining behind the main rival in the fight for fifth place in the world championship, Charles Leclerc, in addition to being caught by Pierre Gasly with the AlphaTauri. Daniel Ricciardo, for his part, was eliminated in Q2 after a lap in which he damaged the floor of his car and was 11th.
This is how Seidl described his team’s performance in the qualifying session : “I think that the corners that were supposed to be high speed were not really corners because they were flat. That’s why it’s not a common track, I would say there are fast turns and medium speed”.
“I think we are more or less where we belong in this type of circuit, which is in the middle of the battle with other teams like Ferrari and AlphaTauri, we have seen it many times this year,” he said.
At McLaren they recognize that it was not the best qualifying of the season, and they are disappointed with the result: “I am not satisfied with today’s result, because I think the work of the whole team throughout the weekend has been good and We were competitive.”
“Unfortunately, Daniel’s damage to the ground due to a hit with one of the curbs, he couldn’t show the potential and the pace we had. This cost us a lot, because he lost a lot of time on the straights, I don’t know how many tenths. , but that prevented him from going through to Q3, which would have been easy,” said the German.
Something totally different happened to Norris , but it also ruined his qualifying: “With Lando we also couldn’t show what we could do, and there are two reasons. He had a yellow flag on his second lap in Q2, and we decided to switch to the softs to ensure the passage to Q3”.
“It was not clear at the time and that compromised the race on Sunday. Even 7th position is disappointing for us,” he concluded.
