McLaren seeking ‘next step’ to hold off Renault

McLaren are working on ensuring the new nose design of their car works to maximum effect to keep alive their hopes of finishing third in the constructors’ World Championship.

The Woking-based team have been at the forefront of the race for P3 behind Mercedes and Red Bull all year, but are in danger of letting Racing Point and Renault leave them behind over the concluding six races of the campaign.

Even with a 15-point deduction for the ‘copying’ controversy Racing Point are now four points ahead of McLaren, who now have an advantage of only two over Renault following Daniel Ricciardo’s podium finish in the Eifel Grand Prix.

A new nose design has been implemented on the McLaren cars but their upgrades have yet to have the desired effect, with Carlos Sainz especially unhappy at the Nurburgring even though he finished a creditable P5.

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Andreas Seidl, the McLaren team principal, is aware that the current issues need to be resolved quickly if Sainz and Lando Norris are to stay in the mix with their main rivals for third position in the constructors’ standings.

Asked about the mounting pressure from Renault, Seidl told RaceFans: “Definitely we are not happy about that because we want to keep this fight for third alive as long as possible. And in the end, we need to make sure we make the next step with the car.

“The introduction of this new nose box is obviously a big change in terms of the academic concept of the car, and we also didn’t underestimate this challenge to get this to work at the track.

“Obviously a weekend like the one at the Nurburgring doesn’t help with no running on Friday. But at the same time, that’s the challenge we are in.

“We believe in this concept giving us more potential looking ahead and it’s important now as a team, between the race team and also the team back home on the development side, that we make the right analysis and conclusions in order to see this potential, actually, also in terms of lap time on the track.”

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