Andreas Seidl says anything can still happen for the McLaren F1 Team this weekend in Abu Dhabi as they look to overhaul the BWT Alpine F1 Team to finish fourth in the Constructors’ Championship.
McLaren suffered a nightmare weekend in Brazil last weekend, with both Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris retiring from the São Paulo Grand Prix, and the gap between McLaren and Alpine now sits at nineteen points in the French outfits advantage thanks to top eight finishes for Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon.
Despite this deficit, Seidl says McLaren will not give up on the challenge, and on the weekend where they will say goodbye to Ricciardo after two seasons with the team, they will be looking to maximise their potential around a track that could offer good overtaking opportunities.
“The team are excited for Abu Dhabi,” said Seidl. “It has been a long season with everyone working extremely hard, so we have one final big push to go. The team will also say goodbye to Daniel at the end of the weekend, but until Sunday evening we keep fighting together.
“It will be interesting to see how this year’s car runs on the new layout that we debuted last year as hopefully it will allow for good overtaking opportunities. Vuse have also taken over the livery for this race weekend as part of their Driven by Change initiative which is a nice way to celebrate the end of the season.
“Whilst the gap to P4 in the Constructors’ Championship is bigger than hoped, this season has shown that anything is possible so we keep our heads down and continue to fight as hard as we can for these final few days. Let’s go team.”