Lando Norris expected a bit more from F1 Hungarian GP, but Andreas Seidl was pleased with the results and updates.
For McLaren’s Norris, it was a bit of a mixed F1 Hungarian GP. A start from the second row of the grid followed by seventh place on race day was overall a good result with six points for him and the team in their respective championships.
Crucially, he finished ahead of the Alpine pair but they are still ahead of McLaren in the teams’ standings. It was a terrific qualifying but seventh in the end may have been a tad disappointing as he went backwards after Mercedes and Red Bull went ahead.
“If you think of P4 as a grid position then you expect a bit more on Sunday and to end just 62 seconds behind the next car ahead of me, yeah it is a big challenge to do anymore from that so therefore our race was against Alpine and the cars behind me and we did a good job with them, managing the tyres, especially the first stint, I think I destroyed my front left tyre after about 6 laps and I was very worried because we aimed for lap 25 or something,” reflected Norris.
“It didn’t really go to plan at all but then our pace on mediums when there was no issue with tyres or management was strong, stronger than Alpine which is good news and a good sign but we seemed to destroy the tyres a lot quicker than everyone else so that’s the only thing we have to really work on but then the middle stint was easy and the final stint was strong, I was just racing on my own and praying for the race to end. so yeah challenging but we did everything I could, so P7 we have to be happy with,” summed up Norris.
From McLaren point of view, the result from Norris was much needed especially with Daniel Ricciardo not scoring and Alpine doing so with both the cars. Team chief Seidl was pleased with the points where he feels they have made a step forward.
“I think in the end P7 was a good outcome for us, for this weekend when we have to accept at the moment that all cars of the top three teams finish the races without major incidents, they are clearly a step ahead,” said Seidl when asked by FormulaRapida.net. “Therefore P7 for us was a good result for various reasons”.
“I am very happy that we could also show in the race encouraging signs that we have already seen in Paul Ricard and then also here on Friday since we introduced our upgrade package in terms of performance we have definitely made a good step forward which allowed us to score in qualifying and then the P7 of Lando, who did a great job a great job all together with the team in quali and also in the race,” summed up Seidl.
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