What’s gone wrong and how much trouble is McLaren in?

Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo could qualify only 13th and 18th respectively, and on Sunday the team rolled the dice and took a gamble – surprisingly perhaps with both cars – to start on medium tyres.

Lacking grip off the grid and around the opening lap, Norris and Ricciardo were fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. When they crossed the start/finish line for the first time, they had tumbled to 18th and last places.

From there it was always going to be a long evening, and by the end, some attrition ahead left them in 14th and 15th, with Ricciardo just ahead. Only Nicholas Latifi and Nico Hulkenberg, from the similarly struggling Williams and Aston Martin teams, were behind.

The build-up to the disastrous race weekend was the perfect storm that took place in the previous week's test.

First, the team lost Ricciardo to COVID, which meant that the Australian missed a lot of priceless track time. Secondly, a brake cooling issue emerged that had not been apparent at the earlier test in Barcelona, where the MCL36 had looked decent.

Running on his own over the three days, Norris was heavily restricted in how many laps he could do, and a lot of vital routine new car homework was missed.

Revised ducts were manufactured and rushed to Bahrain for the race weekend, and while the team wouldn't comment on any ensuing performance loss, inevitably the situation was not optimal.

Nevertheless, the way Sunday unfolded was perhaps even worse than anyone in the camp had anticipated.

"I think what we have experienced today was simply a continuation of the challenges we were facing all weekend," team boss Andreas Seidl said.

"It was always expected to be a very difficult race for us. We had to manage several parameters throughout