Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race Results

McLaren 'happy' with Vandoorne's progress

McLaren insists that it is happy with the progress made by new driver Stoffel Vandoorne during the first half of the 2017 season.

Reports before the Austrian Grand Prix suggested that the Belgian driver had not lived up to expectations. That seemed to hint that the 25-year-old's seat at McLaren might be under threat.

But comments from McLaren's executive director Zak Brown made it plain that the team was fully behind Vandoorne, despite the fact that he is yet to score any points this season.

"We're happy with Stoffel," said Brown. "He's in a difficult situation going up against Fernando Alonso and then the lack of reliability.

"Fernando can adapt to a lot of these issues quicker than Stoffel because he has not been to a lot of these tracks.

"We think he's a future world champion and we don't expect any change there."

Boullier: 'Vandoorne form not as good as expected'

Vandoorne has failed to finish in four of the nine races so far. He did finish in 12th place in Baku, and then took the same position in the next race in Austria.

"I'm actually a little bit disappointed with 12th," he admitted after the race. "If you look at the pace we had throughout the race, I think points just might have been possible.

"We had no problems, our pace has been reasonable, and I felt very comfortable with the car. Unfortunately I was stuck behind some cars and it was impossible to overtake. But that's how it is for us at the moment.

"We were performing well, even if we miss that little boost of the engine in qualifying." Vandoorne told Belgian broadcaster RTBF. "I took a step forward with the team as well and I hope it continues in the next races,"

"Stoffel showed very solid pace all weekend," agreed McLaren sporting director Eric Boullier. "He and his team looked to have made demonstrable progress in every session.

"His race was solid, although he couldn't really show the car's true potential after spending the entire race running in dirty air."

"Stoffel had the pace to score his first points of the season today and looked comfortable in the car," concurred Honda's Yusuke Hasegawa.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.