Seidl: I believe we will have time to do everything for the sprint

On Saturday morning, the McLaren team found themselves in a difficult position when Daniel Ricciardo’s power plant suffered serious problems that could not be remedied by the start of practice, and the Australian was unable to participate. And at the very beginning of the session something happened to the brakes of Lando Norris’ MCL36. But Andreas Seidl, the team leader, hopes his specialists can handle it.

Andreas Seidl: “Definitely not the best start to the day, although everything went well yesterday. Speaking of Daniel’s car, in the morning we discovered a problem and the repair took too long so we didn’t have time to go to the track.

I won’t go into details and explain what exactly the problem is. As for Lando, in the very first race he had a breakdown in the braking system – unfortunately, to fix it he had to tinker, and he was only able to leave the pits at the end of the session and managed to do just one lap, after which he had a start training.

The situation is not ideal and yet we are not allowed to do much with the car in a closed park. I hope this whole situation doesn’t affect us too much during the sprint. We have enough information to choose tires when we look at what the competitors are doing.

I believe in our team that it has time to do everything before the sprint. When we talk about the tasks we face today, the most important thing is not to overdo it, not to act too aggressively to ensure a high enough position on the grid for tomorrow’s Grand Prix. After all, you can earn more points in the Sunday race.

But judging by what we saw yesterday, including in qualifying, we have a competitive car that works well under different conditions. Overtaking at this track is not easy and although faster cars start behind us, we have a chance to maintain positions. On the first lap, as always, I want to regain some positions, but at the same time it’s worth remembering that we have to try not to let the cars crash.