McLaren boss Andreas Seidl claims he has no reason to quit fight against Ferrari after the latter picks 18 points from Mexico to claim P3.
After Mercedes and Red Bull’s intense battle, Ferrari and McLaren are offering a nail-biting contest for P3. In the last race, Ferrari got better off the Woking-based team by a mile.
Lando Norris started from P18 and managed to climb up to P10 to take away a point. However, Daniel Ricciardo’s blank proved to be fatal for McLaren.
Whereas Ferrari’s P5 and P6 gave them 18 points haul, dropping the Maranello based team taking P3 in the standings with a significant margin. Yet, McLaren boss Andreas Seidl sees no reason to lose hope with four races to go.
“I think the most important thing is to accept days like Sunday can happen in racing,” said the team principal, quoted by Motorsport Week.
“At the same time they can happen to a competitor, so there is no reason to give up this fight. We move on and race again straight away next weekend [in Brazil] and try to strike back.”
“The disappointment on Sunday was we only scored one point, but again this can happen to our competitors. We just need to focus on ourselves and score points consistently, which we didn’t manage on Sunday.”
Also read: Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz trash-talk after Mexican Grand Prix race
Daniel Ricciardo had only one job given by McLaren
Starting from P7, Ricciardo was supposed to make things difficult for Ferrari. However, it didn’t happen, and now Ferrari rejoices being closer to their 2021 objective.
“Starting P7, the objective was clear, to stay in the battle with the Ferraris with Daniel, which didn’t happen at Turn 1 and then it was a pretty difficult afternoon,” reflected Seidl. “Norris’ objective was to get back into the points, which he managed with P10.
“On Daniel’s side, he had a good start, picking up positions. Then into Turn 1 he had a short lock-up but he managed to get under control again to make the apex, and then the driver from the outside, they came together in a racing incident that wrecked our Sunday afternoon.”
When awesome became un-awesome. 😤@danielricciardo #MexicoGP pic.twitter.com/xsM7ZhKwnd
— McLaren (@McLarenF1) November 8, 2021
The 32-year-old driver wasn’t penalized for his incident with Valtteri Bottas, which Seidl thinks was the right thing to do. “Daniel managed to make the apex, at the same time when cars are closing in from the outside, all around him.”
Also read: Ferrari eager to beat McLaren to P3 after overcoming the horrendous 2020 season
