“A great way of paying tribute to Mansour” – McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo finished P5 and P6 in France with the livery featuring Mansour Ojjeh’s name.
Mansour Ojjeh was paid a fitting tribute in France, his maternal home, with his name on the McLaren liveries. Furthermore, the drivers Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo finished strongly to ensure a double-points finish. Team boss Andreas Seidl was delighted with it, calling their performance a fitting tribute to their long-term shareholder.
“To finish the weekend in Paul Ricard with a strong result was obviously a great way of paying tribute to Mansour, considering also that his family was here with us and we also had this livery on the cars.
“Mansour was not just a long-term shareholder, for McLaren he was simply a great friend and supporter to us, to the team, and he will be deeply missed. At the same time, we keep going racing in his spirit and with him in mind and I couldn’t think of a better way of paying this tribute to Mansour with a result like that.”
The sun shines on Mansour Ojjeh this weekend 🧡#FrenchGP 🇫🇷 #F1 @McLarenF1 pic.twitter.com/4FgBxKvS7R
— Formula 1 (@F1) June 18, 2021
McLaren overtake Ferrari to P3
Seidl was delighted with Norris and Ricciardo’s performance, the double points ensuring them overtaking Ferrari in the drivers’ standings. He also acknowledged they are not up to the mark during qualifying, and the need to improve there.
“If you look at how this season went so far it is clearly a trend that we seem to struggle more to extract performance out of the car for one lap compared to what we can do on Sundays.
“It seems we have a very strong race car which is dealing well with the challenge of tyre degradation and that then gives us this advantage on Sunday where we can get back to where we want to be as a team. If you also then look at the race, we had two strong drivers putting in some strong drives, some strong manoeuvres as well.
“The team also did an excellent job on the strategy side in order to get us to these positions, putting the drivers in strong positions to be able to manage the tyres.”
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