The fast nature of the track had given McLaren hope to strike back against Ferrari in the battle for third place in the constructors’ championship after Scuderia had built a lead in a number of races.
But Seidl says that the fast corners of the Jeddah track are effectively straights for F1 cars and therefore average cornering performance is more important for a lap time.
Lando Norris qualified seventh for the first race in Saudi Arabia, losing to regular rivals Charles Leclerc of Ferrari and Pierre Gasly of AlphaTauri, while Daniel Ricciardo missed Q3 and will start in eleventh after suffering a floor damage in a curb had suffered.
“As for the track itself, I think that many of the corners that were intended for high speeds are actually not corners because they are full-throttle corners,” said Seidl.
“So I think it’s not your typical high-speed cornering track, there are a lot of medium-speed corners.
“So I think we are pretty much where we are on these tracks, in the middle of this battle between several teams, Ferrari, AlphaTauri and us, which we have seen several times this year.”
Seidl admitted that the team should still do better, with Ricciardo’s incident turning out to be particularly costly.
“I’m obviously not entirely satisfied with the result of qualifying today,” he said.
“Because I think that we have made good progress in terms of performance over the weekend with the work that the team has done together with both drivers. And I think we had a pretty competitive car in qualifying today.
Ground damage cost Ricciardo in qualifying
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
“But unfortunately Daniel couldn’t show what he can because of a damage to the curb on the ground, because I think he had good pace. And couldn’t get into Q3, which was a shame.
“That cost a lot, because in the end the floor was on the floor. That is, in his last sector, where I think he had two green sectors, sector one, sector two, the plank was on the ground, and so he lost a lot on the straights.
“I don’t know how many tenths, but that took away any chance of advancing into Q3, which would have been easy without this damage.”
Norris, meanwhile, was compromised by a yellow flag that forced the team to change their running schedule.
“I think we couldn’t show the full potential of our current pace from Lando’s side for two reasons,” said Seidl.
“After he got the yellow flag on his second lap, the middle run, the first run in Q2, we decided to switch to the soft tires in order to get safely into Q3.
“At that point it wasn’t clear what everyone was going to do, which then endangered Q3 because he didn’t have two shots at new tires. Therefore a bit disappointed with a P7. “
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