McLaren It now shines in Formula 1. It is the most dominant car. Having exceeded Red bull. But in recent years, he has experienced a real ordeal. Especially when Fernando Alonso And Stoffel Vandoorne They were their pilots. The McLaren-Honda and the McLaren-Renault.
Vandoorne recalled in an interview with the F1 website how bad the situation was at that time. He, as a pilot, I couldn’t do anything behind the wheel of a car that just didn’t work.
“It was absolutely a challenge. The first year we were with Honda, we had lots of breakdowns, technical problems at that time. We experienced penalties on the grid almost every weekend,” recalls the Belgian driver, now in the ranks of Aston Martin.
“At the end of that first season we had very good results. So we thought that the following season, with the Renault engine, we would be in much better shape, but that really wasn’t the case. The expectations were very high, but when we are not satisfied, it is a suffering for all“, he explains.
And this resounding failure helped McLaren change completely: “I think it was something that almost had to happen to really know what they were going to do in the future. They had to realize that maybe the car wasn’t as good as it looked.” “.
“Because when we had Honda, we thought ‘okay, the car is good, but the engine is not.’ Then we got a different engine and we still weren’t good…”he remembers.
He admits that the confusion was total when changing the engine and maintaining the same problems: “It meant great confusion in the team in terms of management, with many changes, obviously also among the drivers. In the end, I paid the price.”
Vandoorne leaves McLaren and becomes third driver. first in Mercedes and now at Aston Martin. Where he once again shared a garage with Alonso, with whom he experienced one of his most difficult moments at the Grand Cirque.
