Motor racing-McLaren will settle for fourth place this year, says team boss Seidl | The powerful 790 KFGO

By Abhishek Takle

(Reuters) – Formula 1 McLaren will be happy with fourth place in the overall team standings, but will give their all to reclaim an unlikely third place from former rivals Ferrari, team boss Andreas Seidl said on Friday. .

The Woking-based team head to this weekend’s inaugural race in Saudi Arabia 39.5 points behind the glamorous Italian squad, who need just five points less than the former champions for come third.

The Jeddah race is the penultimate round of the season before the final in Abu Dhabi next week.

“We will give him again every next two races to score as many points as possible and see if anything happens,” Seidl told reporters via video conference from Saudi Arabia on Friday.

“At the same time, I think if we score fourth place this year, I’ll be happy to be honest.

“Ferrari is just coming back in force, which you would expect from a team like Ferrari.

“I think we maximized our points in the first half of the season because of problems also on the Ferrari side, on the operations side, and we have lost over 30 points (in the last three races).”

McLaren finished third last season behind Mercedes and Red Bull in the constructors’ standings – their best one-year result since 2012.

The team seemed on track to repeat that result this season after winning a superb 1-2 in Ferrari’s home race in Italy.

But they have lost ground in all six races since, with the Maranello-based Ferrari team without a win but staging their own comeback after an unusually out of form season in 2020.

The last three races have been particularly deadly with McLaren falling back to fourth place in Mexico, scoring just four points against 47 for Ferrari.

Seidl, however, said McLaren can be happy with his performance this season.

Daniel Ricciardo’s victory ahead of teammate Lando Norris in Italy was the team’s first since 2012 and their first double since 2010.

Norris almost followed that up with a second win in Russia before a tire bet in changing conditions went wrong and took him from first to seventh.

“These are the stages that I want to see and need to see within the team,” said Seidl. “Because it just confirms that the plan we put in place is going in the right direction. “

(Reporting by Abhishek Takle; Editing by Rohith Nair)