Trouble Brewing in McLaren Camp Ahead of Bahrain GP

McLaren simply cannot catch a break this season. It seems to be a case of new year, new faces, same old story for the Woking squad.

At the season opening Australian GP, Lando Norris was on a roll and nabbed 12th in the race. However on the other side of the garage, it was a different and sadder story for Carlos Sainz Jr.

His MCL34 trundled to a halt in the early stages of the race with a mechanical issue. Speaking after the race, the Spaniard said, “It felt like we are getting good power in both conditions, race and qualifying, our top speed last year was around 10 to 12 kph down and this year we are only two or three kph down, partly down to downforce but also as the engine has improved.”

“Unfortunately, reliability… I don’t mind if the speed is good but if we cannot get through lap 11 of the race that is not good. Hopefully we can improve.”

Now, Sainz and the team have confirmed that they have got to the bottom of the issues. However, the bad news is that it will cost the team and the driver his first MGU-K engine.

The 24-year old gloomily confessed, “Hopefully they have been looking at it for the past few days and they have found out, hopefully, the cause of the issue so we can put some solutions in place for this race.”

“If they work or not we will wait and see but it is true we have had a couple of failures during testing so it is a weak point of the car and we need to keep working on it to make sure we don’t throw any more points in the bin because we threw a couple of them away in Australia.”

However, inspite of the setbacks, the McLaren team are still maintaining a positive attitude about Renault’s progress.