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McLaren updates cured “some of the issues” – Seidl

McLaren updates cured “some of the issues” – Seidl

08-08-2019 12:58

Bevan Youl

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl says that the updates being brought in by McLaren are curing “some of the issues” after having struggled with slow-speed corners.

The team had made it known that their cars performance in slow-speed sections was an area of improvement and didn’t expect to perform as well as they did at Hungary.
 
The Hungaroring’s circuit is very technical with a lot of winding long corners which require a good amount of downforce.
 
But McLaren look to have improved in that area after Carlos Sainz finished P5 infront of Red Bull’s Pierre Gasly, while teammate Lando Norris finished P9 but could have been higher if it weren’t for a troublesome pit stop.
 
Seidl said to Autosport: “On a track with a lot of low-speed corners, where we had definitely a weakness on the car, to see that we could now cure some of the issues with the updates we are bringing, and understanding the car better, and better, and how to use it, it is obviously great to have clearly been the fourth-quickest car.

“It is now a big boost for us going into the break, and also for the second half of the season because we have some tracks coming up with low-speed sections and so on.

“That is very, very encouraging.”

However, Sainz wasn’t so positive, saying that the black tarmac surface was one of the reasons for the boost in performance.

“Maybe the Hungaroring has become a medium speed track with Formula 1 cars because it feels fast out there and that suits us a bit better than what we anticipated,” said Sainz.

“And this kind of black Tarmac, as we saw in Austria and Paul Ricard, new surfaces help our performance.

“This weekend we were decently surprised, but still we were lapped so that’s another thing that we need to add to that, so we still have a lot of work to do.”