Up Next
Andreas Seidl believes his McLaren team is only in competition with one Racing Point this weekend because Sergio Perez is out of reach.
Perez was fastest in first practice for Formula 1’s Styrian Grand Prix on Friday, and backed that performance up by going third-quickest in FP2.
That put him four tenths of a second clear of the fastest McLaren of Carlos Sainz Jr in fifth, but Sainz was within a tenth of the second Racing Point of Lance Stroll.
Racing Point’s form in last weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix was a surprise given the team was tipped to lead the midfield battle, but McLaren and its drivers feel the Silverstone-based team has unlocked the performance it was missing for the second round at the Red Bull Ring.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1 about McLaren’s day, team boss Seidl said: “I’m quite pleased, because we could confirm again with P5 and P8 on one lap [pace] that we are there.
“What’s good to see is that I think we are again in the fight with Ferrari and Renault, and with one Racing Point.
“If you look at the cars in front of us, I think we have seen the first time that Racing Point could actually show the potential of the one-year-old Mercedes.
“That was definitely a laptime we could not do, but it was a good session for us.”
Seidl said Racing Point’s performance with its copy of 2019’s championship-winning Mercedes was closer to what McLaren had expected before the season started.
“I’ve always said, if you take last year’s Mercedes, and operate it at the optimum potential, we know that we didn’t make this step with the car development on our side over the winter so it’s just normal what we see of them,” he said.
“At the same time there is at least one car on the Racing Point side that we can fight, and as we know in the race anything can happen.
“We have seen last weekend that we were not as strong on Friday and could fight them on Sunday, and we will try again.”
Sainz said he was much happier with his car after trying “some radical experimental stuff”, and he backed up Seidl’s claim that McLaren didn’t have anything for Perez.
“We know we are not very far from our limit with what we achieved last weekend, but somehow Checo [Perez] is now half a second ahead, when last weekend we were very close to him in qualifying,” said Sainz.
“A bit of a surprise, I’m not going to lie.”
