The Woking-based outfit was preparing for the streets of Monte Carlo, but in the end, its MCL35M was actually closer to Red Bull and Mercedes than other circuits.
Team boss Andreas Seidl was delighted with how things had turned out. Norris finished third, while McLaren continued to claim third place in the constructors’ championship.
“I would say we definitely didn’t expect that we could be so close to Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari,” said Seidl. “We have seen since the beginning of the season and in the first few races we always had problems with the slow sections. That was very encouraging to see this weekend.”
“So a big thank you to the team at home, in engineering and production, who gave us this car for this weekend. They did a great job with this car over the winter, pushing ahead and delivering the upgrades.”
Also read:
The Monaco podium was particularly important for McLaren as it came on a weekend when rival Ferrari could have scored more points in the battle for the best. Charles Leclerc had taken pole position but was unable to start the race after a driveshaft hub broke en route to the grid while Carlos Sainz was only one place ahead of Norris.
Seidl admitted that there was a great risk of a big swing towards Ferrari, which his team had luckily avoided.
“For the championship, the result of the race was obviously a good result for us, because given the fast pace that Ferrari had on Thursday and Saturday, there was a high risk of losing a lot of points to them,” he explained.
“Obviously we benefited from Charles’s bad luck, and you don’t want your competitors to do that this way.
“But it’s important to be there when the opportunity arises and we did it. The race came together with a flying Lando and I think in terms of strategy the team did a great job and was accurate correct.”
The post McLaren would never have expected an F1 podium pace in Monaco first appeared on monter-une-startup.
