Problems pile up for McLaren: 'That's a bad sign'

Setback in Bahrain

In Barcelona, it was still all looking good for McLaren. The team drove the most laps in Spain after Ferrari and Mercedes and also seemed very fast. Andreas Seidl already saw in Barcelona that his team was losing ground in low speed corners, but didn't expect the team to fall so far back in Bahrain either.

During the test week in Bahrain, major problems already arose for McLaren with the brakes. They became too hot and caused many problems. They had to be replaced before the Bahrain Grand Prix. The temporary solution is to replace the carbon brakes for a metal version, reports Auto, Motor und Sport.

No panic at McLaren

The brakes were therefore no longer a problem in Bahrain, but the team no longer understands its own car. ''The balance was actually okay,'' Seidl informed the German medium. ''If your car is fast, that's a good sign, but in this case, of course, it's not.'' The team was mainly working on different front wings and flow vis, to see what the airflow does. This picture may also have been changed by McLaren's new brakes.

The problem is that McLaren also lost a lot of testing time due to the brake problems in Bahrain. Whereas in Barcelona it was still third in the list in terms of the number of laps driven, in Bahrain it drove by far the fewest laps. As a result, the team lacks data on the car, which it has now collected from the first race weekend. It was therefore more of a test for McLaren than a real race weekend.

Although the blow to McLaren is big, Seidl does not want panic to break out at the team. ''There is no point in being hectic. We have to analyze everything very calmly. We have the resources, the talent and the experience in the team to come back. This was only the first race. The season is long enough to come back,'' the McLaren team boss concluded.