Sainz's father says McLaren 'hit rock bottom'
McLaren is determined to pull itself up from "rock bottom" in 2019.
That is the claim of Carlos Sainz, the world rally legend. His son, 24-year-old Spaniard Sainz jr, is switching from Renault to the beleaguered Woking team next year.
Sainz senior thinks his son did well with Renault this year.
"At the beginning it was difficult for Carlos to understand the car," he told Movistar.
"He did not feel comfortable, and it's when you are comfortable that you can get that last tenth or tenth and a half."
56-year-old Sainz thinks his son did better at the end of the year, but is now hopeful he will shine in an orange car in 2019.
That is despite the fact that McLaren hit "rock bottom" this year.
"Everyone thought that with the Renault engine at least they would be ahead of the official Renault team and it has not been that way," he said.
"But I sincerely believe that there are capable people at McLaren. It is a team capable of reacting after a year where I want to think they hit rock bottom.
"There are people there who have said 'It was not the engine, we've done things wrong and it's enough now. We're going to start doing things right for next year'," Sainz snr added.
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Honda and Zach Brown have firmly placed McLaren at its lowest point ever! Zach has done everything to assure that Ron Dennis is forgotten, when maybe he should be remembered for how he built Mclaren up to its pinnacle. Zach, do McLaren fans a favor and resign. You know nothing about running a F1 team
Wrong my friend,Ron Dennis made the decision to drop MERC and use HONDA This was the mistake that put McLaren on the back foot ,Together with a crap chassis .Zach Brown or Father Christmas cant make a silk purse out of a pigs ear.
I agree,. But we’ve got to ask how the heck can Willians And McLaren sink so low while running quality drive packages from Renault and Merc. My guess is they are underfunding the engineering, manufacturing, assembly testing etc by seeking unrealistic profit levels. Underfunding means poor quality staff etc etc. Both companies will struggle for many seasons on this basis.
It's probably all about data guys. Since Ferrari got Haas and Sauber as B-teams they got a lot more data to analyse and learn from. McLaren and Williams have to do it all by them self.
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