Seidl: McLaren has to improve 'in all areas' after 'disastrous' Canadian GP

McLaren must up its game “in all areas” if it wants to remain in contention for fourth place in the constructors’ championship, insists Formula 1 team principal Andreas Seidl.

The Woking-based team came away from last weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix having had neither car finish inside the points paying positions, while its nearest rivals secured top-10 finishes.

Lando Norris was struck with an engine issue in qualifying that left him only 14th on the grid, forcing him to revert to an older-spec power unit for the race.

Norris’ chances to make progress in the grand prix were dashed when McLaren pitted both its drivers together under the virtual safety car, only to not have his tyres ready.

The Briton could only finish in 15th place, while team-mate Daniel Ricciardo narrowly missed out on finishing in the points after being overtaken in the closing stages by Lance Stroll.

Reflecting on McLaren’s difficult weekend in Montreal, Seidl revealed a communications error was at fault for the slow pitstop that wrecked Norris’ race.

“Obviously a disappointing day for us, a highly disappointing weekend for various reasons,” said Seidl, as quoted by Motorsport.com.

“Reliability issues, an operational issue today in the race, but also in terms of pace, and where we want to be.

“On the operation side during the pitstop today, we had a communications issue that was in the end snowballing into this issue that we have seen. We need to analyse and come back stronger.”

Explaining what went wrong, Seidl said the matter would be reviewed back at McLaren’s factory to ensure the mistake is not repeated.

“Obviously, I don’t want to go too much into detail, because it’s something we have to review internally, as a team what went wrong there,” he