McLaren Racing F1 Team Principal Andreas Seidl says that the team was unable to maximize the pace they showed during practice on Saturday in qualifying for Sunday’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix as Lando Norris will start the race in seventh while Daniel Ricciardo starts the race in 11th.
“P7 and P11 in today’s qualifying. We had a quick car today, but unfortunately couldn’t maximise the outcome of quali. Daniel took some heavy floor damage when running over a kerb in Q2, which didn’t allow him to progress to Q3. Lando was unlucky with yellow flags in Q2, which then made us switch to the Soft tyres for the second run in order to ensure we progressed to Q3. This unfortunately meant he only had one set of new Softs for Q3, which compromised the outcome for him. We should have a competitive car tomorrow in the race, let’s make up some positions.”
Lando Norris commented following the session saying:
“I’m disappointed with the end of qualifying really. Happy we’re still P7, because it could’ve been worse today. I got a bit unlucky throughout qualifying with yellow flags, but even so I could’ve been one or two positions higher as I didn’t do the best lap when I needed to, so I’m a bit frustrated. I have a small advantage at the start with the Soft tyre, so I need to make the most of that, but for the rest of the race it’s going to make it a lot trickier. I’m still in a decent position to score some points tomorrow, so we’ll see what we can do.”
Daniel Ricciardo commented on his run saying:
“We had a quick car, but I just picked up some damage on the last run and lost a lot of time. I damaged the floor on a kerb and it was dragging on the straight. I saw the lap-time dropping away. It’s a shame, because we were a lot quicker than P11 today. I’ve used that kerb a lot already, but that time I picked up a bit of damage. We made a good set-up change for quali so I was comfortable and had pace, we just got unlucky.”
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