After a difficult phase, McLaren worked its way up again under team boss Seidl and technical director James Key. Drivers Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz proved to be a competitive pairing, eventually giving McLaren third place in the 2020 championship.
After Sainz left McLaren to join Ferrari, the Woking team quickly switched to bring Renault’s Ricciardo to replace them for 2021.
Ricciardo and Norris were closely matched at the Bahrain Grand Prix at the opening of the season, starting in sixth and seventh, before collecting 18 points for the team on Sunday, which meant McLaren moved back to third in the constructors’ championship.
Seidl stated that the key to McLaren’s resurgence – and his battle against teams with much faster cars – was having two drivers capable of fighting at the top of F1’s stacked midfield for a consistent score . This is also the reason why the team faced Ricciardo.
“As you can imagine, it was obviously important to me that when we opted for Daniel, we made sure that the team that we will have again this year has a very strong driver line-up,” said Seidl afterwards Qualifying in Bahrain.
“Because the key to securing these positions over the last two years, which we were able to secure in the constructors’ championship, was that we always had two drivers who were there and were always ready to score good points.”
“I’m very happy with what we’ve seen from both guys so far. It’s great that we have a very strong driver line-up again. We managed to get through both cars.” [in] Q3, both guys are always very close to each other. “
Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren
Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images
During the race in Bahrain, Ricciardo dropped from sixth to seventh with a damaged floor after being hit by AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly on the first lap.
Norris climbed from seventh to fourth place in one of his best F1 drives to date, which, according to Seidl, was proof that the young Briton had “taken the next step” as a driver.
Commenting on his team’s performance after the season opener in F1, Seidl added that he was “very pleased with what the team has done this weekend because I think the hard work everyone has done over the winter has been paid off. “
Seidl was particularly encouraged to see that Ricciardo and Norris achieved within nine tenths of Max Verstappen’s pole time, a lead of three tenths less than the team that had qualified for the 2020 race.
“The gap we had to pole position was smaller than the last time we were here in Bahrain. This is again an encouraging sign that we are taking a step forward as a team with the car and that we are going in the right direction, “said Seidl.
