Seidl: McLaren needs to bring its “A-game” to beat Ferrari to P3 in F1 2021

Lando Norris was taken out by Valtteri Bottas on the opening lap at the Hungaroring, while Daniel Ricciardo couldn’t score points after picking up damage in the Lap 1 chaos.

While McLaren failed to score in Hungary, Seidl remained encouraged by the team’s progress. 

“I think it’s an open battle as we’ve seen throughout the first half of the season. I have to say, [Hungary] didn’t go to plan but there was nothing we could control but for us it was encouraging to see yesterday that we could actually battle Ferrari on a track like this because that’s something we didn’t expect when coming here,” Seidl said.

“I will look at the first races this season on similar tracks where we couldn’t go their pace. So that speaks for the good work people have been doing back home on the development side in continuously improving the car which is encouraging for the second half of the season.”

Ferrari has enjoyed a strong resurgence after its worst season in over 40 years in 2020.

Charles Leclerc nearly won the British Grand Prix, while Carlos Sainz finished a strong fourth at the Hungaroring.

With the battle for third set to go to the wire, Seidl says his team needs to be at its best to beat the Italian manufacturer in 2021.

“But it is also clear that Ferrari is obviously a very strong team, very experienced, it has everything in place that it needs to have a strong second half of the season, they have two top drivers which is why we need to be on our A-game in all aspects of going racing if you want to compete with them but again as we have seen in the last two and half years now within the team, it’s encouraging and I think we have everything in our hands to battle it out until the last race,” Seidl added.