The lack of downforce affecting Stoffel Vandoorne’s car needs a deep investigation, says Mclaren driver Fernando Alonso.
The Belgian was the slowest driver on the grid on Friday and Saturday and said his car was similarly “undrivable” at Silverstone during the British GP.
Alonso proceeded to Q2 and bagged the 11th place for the German race. He supported Vandoorne and has asked the Woking outfit to investigate the car thoroughly.
“I think he’s doing what he can,” Alonso said of Vandoorne. “Definitely the last two races it seems that car has some kind of performance issue, and there are clear signs on the data that there is less downforce on that car.
“We’ve been changing some p arts, and we need to go deep into that investigation because with both cars close to the points is always a little bit easier.”
Vandoorne called his qualifying “very disappointing” and “hard to accept”.
He also said: “I think the situation is the same as Silverstone. Since we hit the ground in Silverstone, we were by far the last car and it turned out the same today.
“I can’t really tell anything more. It’s frustrating. We changed a lot of parts on the car and it still doesn’t work.
“Definitely I didn’t forget how to drive a car. But the cars are in a similar spec, it’s just that we can see an issue on the car.
“We’ve changed over a lot of parts already and at the moment we don’t really have a solution to just make it work normally.”
Mclaren staff worked overnight, breaking the curfew to make a few adjustments but Vandoorne admitted that “we’re not really moving forward”.
When asked if it is a setup issue, he said: “It’s not linked to the set-up at all. It’s something on the car that doesn’t work.
“We’ve almost changed everything on the car. We see the problem on the data. Right now we don’t have a solution.”
After enduring a few bad races, Alonso’s 11th place start is good news for McLaren. But since Lewis Hamilton and Daniel Ricciardo are out of the top positions, Mclaren’s competitiveness is still in question says, Alonso.
“I think it’s been a similar performance. We were P13 [at Silverstone] and today without the Hamilton and Ricciardo issues we were P13, so I think we are more or less in the same position.
“But on Sundays normally we score some points and we are alive thanks to that in the championship and tomorrow we plan to do the same, to score a couple of points and keep fighting.”
