Vandoorne ‘wishes’ for McLaren pace drop answers

Stoffel Vandoorne says he has no answers for why he’s suffered a sudden drop in speed for McLaren after qualifying in last place for the German Grand Prix.

The Belgian driver has suffered a nightmare few races in Formula 1 which appears set to continue at Hockenheim after qualifying last for McLaren, two-tenths of a second slower than nearest rival Lance Stroll in the Williams, while teammate Fernando Alonso grabbed 11^th place.

Vandoorne feels the same issues he suffered from at Silverstone are hurting his performances in Germany, with a huge lack of grip from his MCL33, and has revealed McLaren has ‘done nearly everything’ to resolve the problem.

“I wish I could give an answer,” Vandoorne said when quizzed on his lack of pace. “We've put in a lot of effort already to solve what is going on. We've changed a lot of parts on the car. We've done nearly everything, and we've come out of qualifying with the same kind of problems.

“I think since Silverstone, we've been almost last in every session by quite a big margin. So far there's nothing more I can say.

“The priority now is to find what is going on. I don't think we've touched the point yet where things are not working, so that's kind of the main priority now.

“I didn’t forget how to drive a car. The cars are in a similar spec [to Alonso’s] it’s just that we can see an issue on the car. We’ve changed over a lot of parts already and at the moment we don’t have a solution for it.”

Vandoorne has a horrific record in terms of qualifying compared to McLaren teammate Alonso this season with the two-time F1 world champion out-qualifying him at every round so far this season.