Andreas Seidl delivers verdict after McLaren make strides in Australia

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl has said that the team is pleased with their performance in Australia but they have much more work to do.

McLaren enjoyed a pick-up in performance in Melbourne with both drivers scoring good points and now they’ll be eager to build on that.

Seidl, though, has explained that there remains a lot of work to do to ensure that progress is maintained.

“Obviously we are very satisfied with the result of the race,” he said via motorsport.com.

“We finished in fifth and sixth positions, we scored 18 points overall and returned to fourth place in the Constructors’ classification. It is a good step forward compared to the previous weekend in Jeddah.

“There are three reasons for this progress – we brought a few small updates that worked, our car adapted very well to the smooth layout of this track and we put into practice what we had learned in Saudi Arabia.

“It was nice to see we had competitive pace throughout the race distance.

“A similar result gives the team great motivation to keep working hard. Now we know we can fight for the top 10, something unthinkable compared to what we saw at the beginning of the season even though we are aware it is not the goal we are aiming for.

“In the race we weren’t able to compete with Mercedes, who proved to be more solid than in qualifying, but we had the certainty of being faster than Alpine, Alfa Romeo and Haas, all cars that had been ahead of us in the first two races.

“This result, compared to our start to the season, represents a turning point. For the first time we managed to bring both cars into the points, but on a flying lap we know we have a one-second gap to the top cars. Obviously we are not happy with this, but our ambition is to reduce this