McLaren: “a race against the clock” to obtain the new parts

Despite satisfactory trials in Barcelona, McLaren is facing some difficulties. While Lando Norris is continuously doing laps on the Sakhir circuit, Ricciardo has been sick since Thursday morning [link: Ricciardo being sick since Friday morning]. The MCL36 is experiencing serious brake problems.

Lando Norris had already complained about it last night, specifying that the team would do everything possible to fix this issue in time. However, the drivers are at the end of the second day of testing and the brakes are still depriving the British driver of a few extra laps.

The McLaren factory was called upon to send the necessary parts to Bahrain. The team hopes that these parts will arrive before the end of the tests, ideally on Saturday morning. The team principal, Andreas Seidl, admitted that the situation was particularly complex for the team.

« After good tests in Barcelona, this first day and a half here definitely did not follow the original plan. » Seidl deplores this Friday morning. « We have an unexpected problem with the front axle of the brakes that we need to solve. It’s therefore a race against time right now to have the improved parts. We will proceed with some modifications that we can make here, which allows us to work on the car and its understanding as well. We can still make some slight improvements to the car in order to extract more performance » Seidl concludes.

However, Andreas Seidl does not show any concerns about the first Grand Prix of the season next weekend. « I am always optimistic because, despite the time we have lost and the limited number of laps we can do, in the end, we can leave the track well prepared for the first race weekend. », adds the German.

As for the second driver, Daniel Ricciardo, Seidl remains optimistic that he will be back in the car tomorrow.