Andreas Seidl has explained why Lando Norris refused to tow Daniel Ricciardo during practice in Mexico.
Ricciardo was trying to set a lap time during FP1, and the team wanted Norris to aid the Australian with a two. However, Norris outright refused to give Ricciardo a slipstream, sending the F1 world into discussions.
“What we’d like to do is open the lap and practice towing with Daniel,” race engineer Will Joseph told Norris.
But Norris replied, “I want to do my lap on my own. I don’t want to do the tow.”
Although it wasn’t shown on air, the youngster did end up giving his teammate a tow later on. Seidl explained why Norris refused to tow Ricciardo initially, and stated that he had his reasons for it.
“Yeah, that’s obviously always one of the opportunities you look for, to play the game between the two drivers to give a tow to each other – especially when it gets tight in qualy 2, to move into qualy 3,” Seidl told Sky F1, as quoted by Planet F1.
“So we wanted to try it on the second lap I think with Lando, but then he wanted to have one more go because he had traffic in the first lap, so he did it the lap after.
“We need to analyse now how good that tow was, and then see what we need to do with our cars.”
Battle lines
McLaren are still engaged in battle with Ferrari for P3 in the Constructors’ Championship. However, momentum is on the side of the Prancing Horse, having outperformed their rivals for the last two races.
With five races left, Seidl thinks McLaren have it in themselves to see Ferrari off.
“I think we are well-prepared for these five races now in terms of parts,” he said.
“We are in such an intense battle with Ferrari, we need to give it all. We need to go to the limit every lap we do out there, and that’s the approach.”
Read more: Seidl issues sharp reality check to McLaren – “We have deficits in all areas”