McLaren's Andreas Seidl believes that the 2022 season exposed key engineering deficiencies within their Formula 1 operation as they finished fifth in the standings. Having claimed fourth in 2021 and ended their near-decade long win drought at the Italian Grand Prix, McLaren were optimistic of closing the gap to the big three teams in 2022, following the introduction of new ground effect technical regulations. However, the car battled severe brake problems early in the campaign, with the team struggling to understand the MCL36 at times. In the end, a consistent hauling of points had the team in contention to snatch fourth in the Constructors' from Alpine at the final race in Abu Dhabi, but they ultimately fell 14 points short. Seidl believes that the season highlighted problems with the Woking engineering structure, something that a plan has been developed to rectify.
Seidl explains McLaren weakness
"This season also has clearly showed us some of the weaknesses we still have within the team in terms of its set-up," Seidl explained to media, including RacingNews365.com , in Abu Dhabi. "With the issues we were having [with brake problems], it became obvious to us that we didn't have enough resources available compared to the other teams, especially on the engineering side, to deal with the development of the current car. "[It also impacted] making sure it was in parallel with next year's car, and that is why we have put a lot of hard work in with the financial department. "Knowing that we are in a cost cap environment nowadays, we actually found synergies and efficiencies within the current way [in which] we do Formula 1 that allowed us to start quite a significant campaign of hiring more engineers. "[We will] have more people available in the future to do things more in parallel, because I think that's definitely one of the weaknesses we currently have within the team and, probably with getting more engineers aboard over the next year, we will be able to make another step."
2022 brake problems to linger
McLaren suffered from front brake problems during pre-season testing, limiting Lando Norris to only a few laps at a time while Daniel Ricciardo missed Bahrain running after testing positive for COVID-19. At the first race in Bahrain, the team was forced to run their car in a compromised state simply to ensure it got to the end of the race. Seidl believes that this problem will also have a knock-on effect for the 2023 MCL37 machine. "It had quite a consequence for us as a team for different reasons," he explained. "First of all, with testing being so limited nowadays, and going into a completely new era of Formula 1, missing out on half the testing compared to the other competitors definitely put us on the backfoot in terms of preparation. "We then had to use a lot of resources as well, at a time [where] we would have liked to use all the resources simply to [add] performance and develop the car, instead of fixing brake issues. "To a certain degree, it probably even had an impact on the development of next year's car, because we couldn't start it as early as we would have liked."
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