McLaren double points a 'great tribute to Mansour Ojjeh' - Andreas Seidl

McLaren tribute to Mansour Ojjeh — Photo: © LAT Images

French Grand Prix

McLaren double points a 'great tribute to Mansour' - Seidl

McLaren ran a special livery in France celebrating the life of its former shareholder

Sam Hall

Monday 21 June 2021 17:00

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl hailed the team's result at the French Grand Prix as a fitting tribute to the team's former shareholder Mansour Ojjeh.

On June 6, ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, McLaren announced Ojjeh's passing, a man credited alongside Ron Dennis with building the team into the championship-winning outfit of the 1980s and '90s.

At the Paul Ricard Circuit over the weekend, McLaren raced with a special livery to commemorate Ojjeh, replacing the team name with the word 'Mansour' on the car and across various branded items.

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After a testing Saturday, Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo recovered to finish fifth and sixth in the race, behind only the Red Bull and Mercedes pairings.

“To finish the weekend in Paul Ricard with a strong result was obviously a great way of paying tribute to Mansour, considering also that his family was here with us and we also had this livery on the cars," said Seidl.

“Mansour was not just a long-term shareholder, for McLaren he was simply a great friend and supporter to us, to the team, and he will be deeply missed.

“At the same time, we keep going racing in his spirit and with him in mind and I couldn’t think of a better way of paying this tribute to Mansour with a result like that.”

Great drivers putting in great drives

Although Norris and Ricciardo had both reached Q3 on Saturday, the two drivers lined up only eighth and 10th on the grid.

Explaining why the team experiences the disparity in performance across weekends, Seidl added: “If you look at how this season went so far it is clearly a trend that we seem to struggle more to extract performance out of the car for one lap compared to what we can do on Sundays.

"It seems we have a very strong race car which is dealing well with the challenge of tyre degradation and that then gives us this advantage on Sunday where we can get back to where we want to be as a team.

“If you also then look at the race, we had two strong drivers putting in some strong drives, some strong manoeuvres as well.

"The team also did an excellent job on the strategy side in order to get us to these positions, putting the drivers in strong positions to be able to manage the tyres."