McLaren: Not as happy as we have been

McLaren sporting director Gil de Ferran has revealed his team are not as happy as they have been in recent times, following both drivers' inability to reach Q3 in China.

Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz were both eliminated from Q2 at the Shanghai International Circuit. Sainz said that he was "disappointed" with his qualifying efforts ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix tomorrow.

"I'm quite disappointed today with P14, but already in FP3, we saw that it was going to be very difficult to get into Q3," Sainz said. "We knew coming into Shanghai, that it was going to be a tough circuit for us and it was going to expose more of our limitations.

"However, I think we managed to put together a decent qualifying. Maybe I missed a tenth and a half on my last run, but overall, I think I extracted pretty much all potential from the car. We'll analyse and work on our weaknesses and we'll prepare ourselves for the race as best as possible."

Norris finished a place below his team-mate on Softs, and the young Briton conceded that Saturday's performance wasn't as strong as recent weeks.

"Today was obviously not as good as the past two weekends, but on the whole, I don't think it was horrendous," Norris added. "Overall, there wasn't a lot more to gain today: Carlos was quicker than me - but he wasn't ahead of anyone else. I think he did a really good job of getting the most out of the car.

"The track just doesn't suit our car, compared to the previous two. It's just an area we have to work on."

De Ferran added: “Once again, today we had proof of how competitive this 2019 Formula 1 field is. Obviously the further forward one is in qualifying, the happier one is. Therefore, on the happiness scale, we’re not feeling as happy as we have been!

“We’ve been working on the set-up of the car throughout the weekend, and in reality I’m not sure we had the pace to get into Q3. Nevertheless, we can still race well from where we are, given our free tyre choice and the encouraging race pace we’ve shown to date.

“One thing we fully expect from the 1,000th Formula 1 Grand Prix here tomorrow in China is that it will provide the fans with incredible battles up and down the field.”