F1 News
Seidl: 'Driver line-up key to McLaren resurgence'
- GPblog.com
McLaren had to come a long way but seems to have finally found its way back to the top. From a ninth place in 2017, the British team managed to work its way up to an eventual third place in 2020.
Revival of McLaren
At Motorsport.com McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl talks about McLaren's resurgence in recent years. "The key in the last two years for securing those positions that we were able to secure in the constructors' championship [fourth in 2019, third in 2020] was that we always had two drivers who were there and could always score good points."
In 2019 and 2020, Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris proved to be a good combination. According to Seidl, it is important for the team to have two drivers who can fight at the front of the midfield to consistently score points.
Choice for Ricciardo
With the announced departure of Sainz to Ferrari, McLaren had to look for a replacement. Eventually, Daniel Ricciardo was lured away from Renault. "It was obviously important that when we made the decision to go for Daniel, we just made sure that the team has a very strong driver line-up again from this year onwards."
With fourth place for Norris and seventh place for Ricciardo, McLaren immediately managed to take back third place in the championship at the first Grand Prix of the season."I'm really happy with what we've seen from both guys so far," Seidl said. "The gap we had to pole position was smaller compared to what we were able to do last time out here in Bahrain, which is another encouraging sign that as a team we are making a move with the car forward and that we are moving in the right direction."