McLaren “don’t want to compromise next year” with focus on fourth place

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl says that he “doesn’t want to compromise next year” by focusing all attention on finishing fourth in the constructors championship behind Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull.

The Woking based team had an exceptional run towards the end of the first half of the season but two retirements from Carlos Sainz and only point finish and one retirement from Lando Norris has seen a chunk of their lead taken away.
 
Renault secured their best finish at Monza with Daniel Ricciardo and Nico Hulkenberg in fourth and fifth, leaving them only 18 points behind McLaren.
 
The British team only plan on bringing a few minor updates over the next few races, wanting to focus more on the development of their 2020 car.
 
Seidl said to GPToday.net: "We plan to bring parts, not huge updates, just small parts to the next two or three races at least.
 
"Then we need to see when we switch fully onto next year's car on the development side.
 
"It's something which is open. We want to fight for this P4 position for as long as possible, but for me, it's important to make the next step with next year's car.
 
"So I don't want to compromise next year by suddenly switching the focus onto this year again.
 
“We have a plan in place for what we want to do this year and we have a plan in place for how we want to approach next year." 
 
While the battle for fourth is heating up Seidl finds it difficult to predict whether a track will suit the McLaren car or not due to the different characteristics of circuits and temperatures.
 
"I think it's so difficult to judge this year, it's not just for us, it's for every team in the midfield," added Seidl.  
 
"It's not just dependant on the track characteristics (also) the tarmac, the temperatures, the way you can set up the car, which window you have the car for different tracks.
 
"We've seen for example, at Budapest we expected to struggle more, we were suddenly the fourth fastest car. So it's difficult to judge, to be honest.”