Stoffel Vandoorne says he was suffering from a “big issue” with his McLaren MCL33 that left his car “almost undriveable” during qualifying for Formula 1’s British Grand Prix.
Vandoorne struggled for pace on Saturday and finished ahead of only Williams’ Sergey Sirotkin in Q1, with just 18 drivers setting a time amid Lance Stroll’s off and Brendon Hartley’s non-participation.
Vandoorne finished nine-tenths down on McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso as he suffered a Q1 exit for the third successive Grand Prix, and pinned the loss on a car problem.
“We definitely could have got more out of the car today,” said Vandoorne, who will take the race start from 17th place.
“We had a bad FP3, there wasn’t a good feeling in the car and I really struggled for grip.
“We couldn’t get any decent laps in – it was difficult to push and we didn’t have any real pace, so it’s a shame to come out of qualifying like this.
“Since this morning we’ve had a big issue with the handling which made the car feel almost undriveable.
“We need to understand why that happened and what went wrong.
“Clearly the other car seems to have some pace, so it’s been a pretty difficult and frustrating day.
“After yesterday, there was an explanation as to why the cars were performing quite differently, so this morning we made both set-ups the same but something didn’t feel right in the car at all and we weren’t able to find what the problem was before qualifying.
“In qualifying too it felt pretty bad, and there was nothing more we could do.”
Alonso will start the race from 13th position in the sister MCL33.
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