McLaren’s Mexico woes a learning opportunity - Seidl

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl sees the Mexican Grand Prix as a learning opportunity after the team failed to score a point for the first time in five races.

Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris started from seventh and eighth respectively, and ran as high as fourth and sixth early on after strong starts. However Norris’ race was all but ended by a pit stop error, and then Sainz plummeted through the field in the second stint after having to start on soft tires. Seidl said the team must take lessons from the tough weekend.

“It was a painful Sunday for us after having several good race weekends now, or good Sundays,” Seidl said. “For different reasons.

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“First of all, especially on the hard tires, we didn’t have the pace we have seen in the two days (before) with the car. It is something we need to analyze and understand; if it was related to track temperatures being higher or something else.

“Then obviously after having good starts with both cars, having the pit stop issue on Lando’s car destroyed his race, and his race was over. We later on decided to stop his car since we are running several parameters of the car at the limit and we didn’t want to risk any damages.

“Going away from here, I think we can be lucky that we didn’t lose any more points in the constructors’ championship, because the top six cars finished, and points behind were well distributed between teams. A day like this is part of the process for our team to become a better team. Lots of opportunities to learn from, and simply was a reminder that we still have a lot of work to do to become a better team.

“Definitely in terms of pace it was a setback. And actually it was the first time in quite some time that we have seen a different pace on Sunday compared to the other two days of the weekend so we simply need to analyze what the issue is."