Andreas Seidl: Sainz’s P3 and McLaren’s constructors P4 an “amazing achievement”

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl has hailed Carlos Sainz’s P3 finish at the Brazilian Grand Prix and the team’s confirmation of securing P4 in the constructor’s championship as an “amazing achievement”.

The Woking-based team have endured a turbulent five years since their last Formula 1 podium finish in 2014, when they were powered by Mercedes engines before switching to Honda.
 
That switch brought about reliability issues and poor performances by the teams standards before switching again to Renault in 2018, proving to be the right choice with 2019 becoming their best finish since 2012.

“P4 in the Constructors' World Championship for McLaren secured. First podium for Carlos in his F1 career and first podium for McLaren since 2014,” said Seidl.

“What an amazing achievement for the entire team back home in the factory plus here at the track, and for Carlos and Lando after putting in so much hard work throughout the year.

“Big, big thank you to every single member of the team. We woke up this morning after a difficult Saturday with a clear commitment to never give up and fight back.

“We executed well today as a team, we had some difficult strategy decisions to make, did great pit-stops, had two brilliant race drivers in the cars and in the end deserved to score this P3 and P8 after the cars at the front were dropping out.”

The focus now for McLaren is the drivers standings with both Sainz and Lando Norris able to finish in the top 10.

The Spaniard sits in seventh on 95 points, level with sixth placed Pierre Gasly while Norris currently is 11th on 45 points, only one behind Sergio Perez in 10th.

“We keep our heads down and now focus on securing our positions in the Drivers' World Championship,” he added.

“The achievement this year together with the podium today is the perfect motivation for all of us to keep working hard in order to score podiums again in the future for McLaren based on our own outright performance.”