Carlos Sainz has called on McLaren to keep their focus ahead of this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix.
It was at this point 12 months ago when the wheels began to fall off the British team’s season, as they struggled to develop last year’s chassis after a similarly strong start.
But despite a 13-point lead over Racing Point in fourth in the Constructors’ standings, the Spaniard knows McLaren has only built a solid platform from which to push on from.
“After three races in a row scoring points, we’ve got some good momentum and we will try to extend that in Canada,” he said in his race preview.
“Monaco was a strong weekend for me personally, but it is already in the past and we know the car has a margin to improve, so now is the time to push even harder if we want to maintain our position in the championship.
“Getting overconfident would be a huge mistake at this point.”
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Recently asked about McLaren’s upturn in performance in 2019, CEO Zak Brown put it down to one thing.
“Teamwork. If you look at things like winter testing, I was very pleased to see we were the first team out on seven of eight days,” he was quoted by PlanetF1.
“The biggest thing I’ve noticed is everyone’s clear on their role, everyone’s motivated, and working really well together. That’s why you’re seeing things like good pitstops and good preparations.
“It’s teamwork that produces that type of results and [new team boss] Andreas [Seidl] is just going to bring another level of clarity to roles and responsibilities and focus.”
Brown then made a rather bold comparison between the differences he has seen at McLaren and Mercedes.
“If we look at Mercedes winning all the races, yes they’ve got a great budget, but they are also a phenomenally well-run racing team so they can do the pitstops they pull off. They seem to not have bad weekends,” the American explained.
“That’s a great racing team. That’s what I’m starting to see here and Andreas is going to make that even better.”
