McLaren refuse to concede defeat in Alpine fight

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl has refused to concede defeat in his team's championship battle with Alpine despite a sizeable margin opening between the teams.

A double retirement in Brazil has left McLaren with a mountain to climb if it is to pip Alpine to fourth in the constructors' standings.

With only this weekend's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix remaining, the team is behind by 19 points, meaning Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo must finish fifth and sixth while recording the fastest lap and hoping Alpine fail to score, just to draw level.

Only at the Singapore Grand Prix has the team secured the number of points required to achieve this.

“Obviously, what happened in Brazil to us was a big disappointment because we had a great opportunity," said Seidl.

"But in the end, we have to acknowledge that as a team, we didn’t manage to pull it off.

“I think we were struggling in general with performance but one of the main things, when you go racing, is that you have to see the chequered flag.

"And through a reliability issue on Lando’s side and through two incidents on track that were not really necessary, [we did not do that].

“At the same time, our main competitor for P4 scored big.

“That puts us in the position to be 19 points behind for Abu Dhabi, which obviously makes it difficult to stay in the fight for this P4."

Despite the scale of the task to overcome Alpine and finish fourth for the second year in succession, Seidl refused to throw in the towel.

“We’re competitors, we’re sports guys," he added.

"As long as it is theoretically possible, we will simply focus on ourselves and make sure we pull it off once more in Abu Dhabi.

“Then, in the end, whatever the outcome is, we have to accept it and the ranking of the season is then a fair reflection of where we have finished.”

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