McLaren is having a poor run in 2022 and is currently behind Alpine F1 in the fight for P4 in the constructors championship.
McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl believes that the poor or under-performance of McLaren has come to be no surprise to him.
The British team has performed rather poorly this season as the regulations changed. Many were expecting the team would have a better season after over a decade of uncompetitive cars.
Nevertheless, the team was only able to come up with a car scoring points in midfield. McLaren has looked slower as compared to Alpine. On multiple occasions, the team has even looked slower than or equal to the teams of Alfa Romeo and Haas in the midfield.
This hasn’t come as a shock to Andreas Seidl, who expected the team to be fighting in midfield only. He knew the new regulations would not help his team only entirely.
Moreover, he already thought that the teams that were strong before regulations changed would still stay the same.
Andreas Seidl explains why it was no surprise to him
Speaking in an interview Seidl said:
“I didn’t expect a big change in the pecking order going into this new era of Formula 1.”
“Why? Because the teams that are simply better teams right now, with their established organisations – with their established infrastructure, with their established tools they are using – there is no reason why they should not do a better job compared to us preparing [for] this new era.”
“And that’s what we are seeing.”
McLaren was not able to outspend other midfield teams this season because of the new budget cap.
“We should also not forget that all the teams that we were outspending in the past – because we were the fourth biggest team – suddenly are in the middle of the fight as well,”
he continued.
“Some of these teams, like Alpine, like Alfa Romeo, they have state-of-the-art infrastructure in place already.”
“That’s why we have to accept that these guys can do as good as us, maybe even ahead of us at the moment, which is not a situation we are happy with, but that’s the reality we are in.”
The team has repeatedly promised to fight for wins and championships but is failing to deliver yet again. The new regulations have also not worked for the team.
Seidl aims for 2025
Andreas Seidl explained that the team aims to be back in front by 2025. He revealed that McLaren is making new wind tunnel facilities for its future prospects and will make a competitive enough car by 2025.
“We plan to have the wind tunnel ready [by the] middle of next year, which means part of the ’24 car development will benefit from the new wind tunnel already,”
he said.
“The first full car that [will be] developed in the tunnel is the ’25 car. On the driving simulator side, we are planning to complete a new one [at the] end of this year/beginning of next year, where we then hopefully see some benefits already next year, or [at the] latest in ’24.”
Will they be able to produce a good-enough car for the 2024 season and a fully competitive car in 2025, that we will know surely. Rather, the thing which is more unclear is who will drive those cars.
With the Alpine-Piastri-McLaren drama still far from over yet, it is unclear what the driver line-up might be in 2023. Moreover, a probable Daniel Riccardo sacking for Piastri is heading towards a court case as Piastri might have two legal contracts.
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