McLaren F1 Principal Explains Where Team Lost a Shot at Podium With Carlos Sainz at the Sakhir Grand Prix

The fight for P3 at Constructor’s championship had McLaren, Renault, and Racing Point battling hard. The road was tight, and so was the goal. However, after the Sakhir Grand Prix, McLaren will have to say goodbye to their chance of winning P3.

The short circuit of the Sakhir Grand Prix witnessed an 87 lap race. With lap times well below a minute, the Carlos Sainz had assumed a P3. However, at lap 55, when the Virtual Safety Car flashed, McLaren pitted him. His rivals like Perez, Stroll, and Ocon did not pit and continued.

Unfortunately, it was a brief Virtual Safety Car period, and before Sainz could make it out of his pit, the race resumed. This caused the racer to lose solid ground. Although his eventual P4 did not disappoint him, he will lament the loss of his second podium for the season.

Team Principal Andreas Seidl faced questions on Sainz’s two-stop strategy. Many blamed this very strategy for Sainz losing out on his second podium of this season. However, Seidl has differing views on the topic.

“Seeing how the race unfolded, it worked for Esteban and Lance. Probably because they benefited from the safety car times, that’s when Carlos had to come to them with the last set of tires and would have had an advantage.

“It is difficult to analyze if it would have made the difference in a normal career,” commented the German.

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McLaren appears laid back in their explanation of Carlos’ Sakhir strategy

Andreas Seidl tries his best to cover the obvious error in judgment by strategy experts. However, his words give way to his secluded thoughts. He may have several reasons to justify a two-stop race, but even he later agreed that it was unnecessary.

Seidl understands that his team made a blunder with that pit stop. Carlos raced heroically on Sunday and he deserved a podium. However, instead of accepting their faults, Seidl made a shocking revelation of Checo being unstoppable on Sunday.

“In any case, we have to congratulate Checo. He was flying, showed what he is capable of and against that we could not compete. With him we would not have been able to, he was at another level,” commented the german principal. Well, that is being a little less competitive, we presume.

Till the very end, Andreas persisted on his point instead of agreeing that maybe they mishandled Carlos’ strategy. The team would definitely not want any kind of misunderstanding within them, and we hope this issue will definitely not blow up to be something severe.

Read More – ‘I’ve Been Lucky Have Norris As Teammate at McLaren’- Carlos Sainz