Commenting on the results of the Bahrain Grand Prix, McLaren drivers believe they have started the season well, as this circuit is not the best suited for the MCL38 car.
Lando Norris (6th): “Compared to what it was a year ago, everything is much better now – that’s a fact. In my opinion it’s not a bad day, although you can’t call it simple. We were capable of the same pace as Mercedes, this is exactly the level we expected. This is already a reason for joy. We are quite far behind Ferrari and Red Bull, but that was to be expected.
The balance of the car was not optimal, the track conditions had changed, the wind was a lot quieter than we expected and it didn’t seem to help us. But I’m happy with my work, although I could have achieved more, in the sense that I wanted to be ahead of George Russell, because there wasn’t much left for him. And yet I feel like I’ve gotten almost everything out of the car and that makes me happy.
However, if you look at the statistics of our performance in Bahrain, we have not managed to achieve high results at this track, and a start to the season like today can be considered quite positive. We now know what level we are at and at the end of last year, for example, we had a lot of great races. But even then Mercedes and Ferrari were ahead of us, so I hope today’s performance remains the worst of this season, and on circuits better suited to our car we can count on better results.”
Oscar Piastri (8th): “Probably 6th and 8th place are not the positions we want to be in, but such a start to the season cannot be called bad. It is still difficult to predict how the next races will go for us, as they will be held on completely different circuits and the speeds will be much higher in Jeddah, Melbourne and Suzuka. But I sincerely believe that since we both earned points today, this start to the championship can be considered quite worthy.
During the off-season, taking into account the experience of my debut season in Formula 1, I mainly worked on increasing my race pace and learning to work with the tires. I think today went quite well, despite the unusually cool weather, so I’m not too upset about these results. Perhaps yesterday’s qualifying could have been carried out with more confidence. Overall, my main goal is to learn how to put everything together and achieve greater stability.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
