An important quality for being a good leader in a work group is not to get too excited when things are going well and not to get depressed when the results don’t come. This attitude is certainly not lacking in the McLaren team principal, Andreas Seidl, who together with CEO Zak Brown in recent years has managed to bring the Woking team back to the top positions of the F1 grid. Fourth in 2019 and third in 2020 in the constructors’ classification, the British team currently occupies the lowest step of the world championship podium. However, the season for the ‘papaya’ team is characterized by a constant fight with Ferrari for the third place finish.
In Monza and Russia the performances smiled on the cars of Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo, while in the last round, in Turkey, it was clearly the Ferrari the better car of the two. The only 7.5 points that separate the two teams in the standings demonstrate the great balance that characterizes this challenge. Seidl, who was the first to invite the whole team to keep their feet firmly planted on the ground after the sensational double at Monza, underlined how the weekend in Istanbul – with Norris seventh at the finish and Ricciardo even 13th – served as a reminder of the road McLaren still has to go before you can really get back to the top.
“I always try to have internally, but also externally, a clear and realistic picture of where we are as a team – Sedil commented after the Turkish GP to the site RacingNews365.com – to what level are we with our car, with the way we work together, with our organization, with our culture, with our infrastructure. This weekend was a combination of this realistic picture that I have and that we all have at McLaren about where we are. The overall picture is good, because we have made good progress over the past two and a half years. But it also confirms that we still have a long way to go”Concluded the former Porsche manager.