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McLaren: "This circuit has indeed exposed many of our weaknesses"

18:45, 25 Aug 2018

byJake Williams-Smith

McLaren sporting director Gil De Ferran believes that McLaren's weaknesses were on full display during qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix. Fernando Alonso qualified 17th whilst under pressure teammate Stoffel Vandoorne qualified last in 20th position.

Split only by the two Williams' cars of Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin, McLaren will be kept off of the back of the grid only due to grid penalties for Nico Hulkenberg and Valtteri Bottas.

“This circuit has indeed exposed many of our weaknesses, to an extent that we were unable to overcome them today," said De Ferran in the teams post-qualifying report.

“While we are very disappointed with our qualifying performance, we will approach tomorrow with our usual unwavering fighting spirit in the quest for a good result.”

Alonso admitted that the the team had lost performance as of late but that he enjoyed his qualifying despite the lowly result.

“We’ve lost a bit of performance in recent races, but on top of that we knew Spa would be quite a difficult race for our package in terms of performance, and so will Monza. We will try to defend here and attack on more favourable tracks.

“My qualifying lap today was enjoyable. Driving these cars on this circuit is always very special because they feel fast and grippy, but then you cross the line and your time is slower than your competitors, which means that tomorrow we’ll have to recover.

“We try to score points in every difficult situation, so why can’t we score points again tomorrow? We need something special to happen, so maybe there is some rain coming that will give us a chance.”