Stoffel Vandoorne has left Hockenheim full of frustrations after yet another poor display from McLaren. At one stage, it looked like the Belgian was forced to retire until engineers changed some settings on the car.
In practice sessions over the duration of the weekend, Vandoorne ended up in 20th place. He would have started the race from the back if it wasn’t for Ricciardo’s and Gasly’s penalties.
McLaren are expected to bring upgrades to Hungary. A track which they are usually stronger on. Vandoorne isn’t too inspired by the upgrades, he just asks for his “normal car” to return.
“The most important thing now is changing things around on my car and arriving in Hungary with a normal car,” he said in an interview on crash net.
“We had a terrible first part [of the race] when we were almost last - as we’ve been most of this weekend, to be honest.
Then we had an engine issue; we thought we had to retire the car but then we found some settings to make it work again, even though with a little lower power than normal.”
It’s a question a lot of people want answers to. Just how do Fernando Alonso and Vandoorne maintain their motivation?