New chassis for Sainz in Barcelona

McLaren

New chassis for Sainz in Barcelona

McLaren boss confirms a change of chassis for Sainz

Sam Hall

Friday 14 August 2020 11:39

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McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl has revealed the team has given Carlos Sainz a new chassis for the Spanish Grand Prix in a bid to prevent a repeat of overheating issues suffered at Silverstone.

Sainz struggled to match team-mate Lando Norris at the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix, finishing 13th with Norris ninth.

A problem in the pits hindered his race-day performance, but his weekend as a whole was compromised by overheating issues.

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Ruling out potential causes for the issue, McLaren has taken the decision to switch to a new chassis.

Seidl explained: "What we normally have is a rotation of monocoques during the year as a standard. We simply distribute the mileage evenly, and it was planned to do anyway for next weekend in Spa, but with the temperature differences we had at Silverstone, we put this change forward by one race.”

Going deeper into the reasoning for making the change, Seidl said: “What we will do for him here is we did different changes to the build of the car, simply to try to understand or exclude the temperature difference that we had at Silverstone.

"So we changed several components, including the monocoque as well, because the radiator backs are connected to [this], and in the end today we need to see in free practice one and two if we could get to the bottom of the issue we had.

“I think it’s also important to understand that, in terms of pure performance, it doesn’t really make a big difference, but with the car in Silverstone running two or three degrees hotter than the other car, it simply triggered exactly the threshold where we had to open up the bodywork on Carlos’s car, which then was a downside on track, in speed and obviously a deficit in lap time.”

“Again, if you look back now on the first five races, especially on Carlos’s side, there was a lot of things happening, a bit on the pit stop side, like this temperature topic at Silverstone which was out of his control and which caused him to lose a lot of points compared to Lando also.

“It’s our task to do better here and hopefully we can start doing that from his home race onwards.”

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