Boullier explains McLaren driver delay

Editor

Eric Boullier has revealed that McLaren opted to delay driver talks until after the summer holiday in order to ensure that all involved were able to have a restful break.

McLaren have three drivers wanting a place on next year’s grid but only two seats.

Fernando Alonso is expected to retain his ride as he already has a contract in place, while it is between Jenson Button and Stoffel Vandoorne for the second seat.

Both drivers will enter talks with the Woking team in the coming weeks after McLaren decided to delay any negotiations until after the summer break.

Explaining the decision, Racing Director Boullier told F1i.com: “It’s very simple.

“Driver discussions are always very emotional with the fans, with the sponsors and even internally. So we had six races in eight weeks, we had a difficult summer, so why start the headache of having these discussions in the middle of this, you know?

“So we decided lets get through the shutdown, everybody’s rested, we’ll come back from the shutdown and then we’ll sit down and start to discuss what we want to do.”