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Ferrari’s slump has set up an ultra-close four-way fight to be third-best team in Formula 1, with Racing Point and Renault also “within a tenth”, says McLaren.
Lando Norris trailed Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc last Sunday despite scoring a shock podium but the eventful circumstances of the season opener helped Ferrari get ahead in its unexpected scrap with last year’s leading midfield team.
McLaren had a clear edge in qualifying, in which Racing Point and Renault were also faster than Ferrari.
Team boss Andreas Seidl believes all four teams will remain close together at the second part of the Austrian double-header, which began with Sergio Perez topping FP1 for Racing Point.
But Seidl says he and his team refuse to “underestimate” Ferrari’s “infrastructure, experience and manpower”, which has helped it fast-track aerodynamic upgrades, or discount the quality of its other opposition.
“We need to be very careful, it’s only one weekend so far and only one track,” he said when asked by The Race if Ferrari was now McLaren’s target.
How McLaren compares to Ferrari in this mini-development race could be telling
“The good thing coming away from Sunday was that actually four teams: Renault, Racing Point, Ferrari and us were within a tenth in terms of performance, also within the race.
“Which is encouraging for us because it shows that we made a good step forward with the car.
“But Renault as a works team is having the power to develop now their car with an aggressive speed.
“Racing Point we know they run a one-year-old Mercedes, so if they get everything together that’s a car which is difficult to compete with.”
McLaren is not standing still and has its own upgrades to trial in Friday practice. Its drivers played the party line in not getting carried away with thoughts of fighting Ferrari but admitted last weekend was an excellent starting point.
This is the first James Key-designed McLaren, and represents a significant part of the team’s bid to eventually rejoin the very front of the grid. So how it compares to Ferrari in this mini-development race could be telling.
“The midfield is very close, Ferrari still have a lot of strengths, which they’ve not been able to show as much,” reckoned Lando Norris on Thursday.
“I think they’ll come back into play a lot in the future races. We’ve just given myself a very good platform to go off and to see further improvements.
“But I still believe Ferrari have a better car than what we do as a whole package, throughout the whole season.”
It’s possible the second Red Bull Ring race will offer little of value in terms of determining the outcome of this four-way fight behind Mercedes and Red Bull.
Ferrari’s disadvantage on the straights will likely hurt it again, and then F1 switches to a very different challenge in Budapest next week at the maximum-downforce Hungaroring.
But that could make it even more important for McLaren to make hay while the sun shines.
How close are Renault and Racing Point?
Both Renault and Racing Point are also in the thick of the midfield scrap with McLaren and Ferrari, although the results in Austria last weekend didn’t entirely represent their true pace.
Racing Point had the better run, with Perez qualifying and finishing sixth but Lance Stroll retiring early.
Perez missed out on a tow in Q3 and potentially had the pace in the car to challenge Norris and Alex Albon for a place on the second row.
He then had a subdued first stint, running behind Norris but not able to attack him before the first round of pitstops, and used mediums to overtake Norris and run fourth behind Albon but was ordered to stay out under the second safety car.
Although this allowed him to climb to third, he was shuffled back to sixth behind Leclerc, Albon and Sainz – who all passed him on fresh rubber.
While the failure to stop cost a potential podium, Racing Point’s pace was not quite as strong as hoped. Practice had suggested it could lead the midfield pack as the third-best team behind Mercedes and Red Bull.
“Between McLaren and Ferrari, it really depends on the lap and, ultimately, I don’t think it’s really possible to say at this stage who’s quicker, who is in front because it’s so tight,” said Stroll.
“And then in the race it was disappointing not to get the maximum out of it.
“We missed out on a lot of points with Sergio’s strategy in my retirement, so that’s the frustrating part. But it’s still early days.”
Perez suggested it’s so close in this part of the field that “it’s very much down to the drivers for now”.
But Renault also need to be factored into this equation even though its results – 10th for Daniel Ricciardo in qualifying and eighth for Esteban Ocon in the race – might suggest it’s out of the fight.
Ricciardo was unable to set a serious qualifying time in Q3 thanks to Valtteri Bottas’s off and the resulting yellow flag before retiring early in the race with engine temperatures skyrocketing.
Ocon failed to pick up a tow in Q2 and didn’t string together a strong lap, so had to fight his way through from 14th on the grid in the race.
While Ricciardo suggested the Renault didn’t quite have the pace to lead that front-of-the-midfield pack, he believes it’s in the thick of the fight.
“From the second row back it is tight,” said Ricciardo.
“Qualifying, we were a bit unlucky with a yellow, otherwise I think we were probably a top seven, or safe to say top eight car in quali. So I think we’re there, we’re certainly in that fight.
“The race was obviously a bit cut short for me but even though I did only a small amount of laps there was still some things which I learned from the race that we can be better at.
“For now [there’s] a little bit more [to come] from the race trim car we can find, the quali-spec car I think we are there.
“It’s hard to say what position I feel we are but that midfield, I want to say we’re in that right at the front of it within a tenth.”
Opportunism only for the team in limbo
Though AlphaTauri recorded a seventh place finish last weekend, it is not expecting to be a strong points contender in normal circumstances.
The Red Bull junior team has adopted a place in limbo in the midfield battle, quicker than the tailender trio of Alfa Romeo, Haas and Williams but not on the level of the teams discussed above.
Pierre Gasly says that makes his result last Sunday, earned after the team wanted to retire the car early on because of debris in the brake system, all the more encouraging.
Daniil Kvyat is trialling an unspecified upgrade on Friday at the Red Bull Ring. This needs to work in order for the team to revise its target and challenge the leading midfield runners on merit.
“At the moment we are not top 10 contenders,” says Gasly. “McLaren, Racing Point and Renault are clearly faster than us over one lap.
“We are a bit in the middle between the top midfield and the guys at the back.
“We have a clear plan of development coming over the next few weeks. We need to take everything we can, every opportunity.
“That’s why I think that seventh place last weekend was really important for us because it’s going to be difficult to reproduce this kind of performance in normal conditions.”
Haas boss Guenther Steiner says his team’s focused on finishing eighth this year, no better, after a trying first round of the season.
So the midfield has been split into two distinct groups early on, with AlphaTauri hoping to slot into the ultra-competitive Class B rather than fall into a new Class C.
