Andrew Seidl says a lot of the choices the McLaren F1 team made during qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix on Saturday were made to maximize their potential for Sunday’s race.
Lando Norris went into the session knowing he would be starting towards the back of the pack after pre-race engine changes triggered grid penalties, and he made it into Q3. He did not use a new set of soft tires in the top ten shootout, instead saving them for potential usage on Sunday, when he will start eighteenth on the grid.
Daniel Ricciardo missed out on making it into Q3 by less than a tenth of a second, but grid penalties for Norris and three other drivers moves him up to seventh on the grid.
Seidl, the Team Principal at McLaren, is expecting an exciting race on Sunday with the grid mixed up thanks to the penalties for multiple drivers, and he hopes that the team can score good points with both Ricciardo and Norris as they continue their battle with the BWT Alpine F1 Team for fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship.
“After qualifying today and once all the grid penalties are applied, we’ll be starting the race in P7 with Daniel and P18 for Lando,” said Seidl. “Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to get into Q3 with Daniel.
“On Lando’s side we decided not to use the set of new soft tires in Q3, knowing about the penalty and to save them for the race tomorrow. Given the circumstances we have made certain choices for today’s qualifying which will hopefully benefit us in tomorrow’s Belgian Grand Prix.
“Our full focus is now on that. The aim is to fight for points with both cars. The mixed-up grid will hopefully give us a very exciting race which we can look forward to.”
