Horner: McLaren threat could persist in remaining races

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner believes McLaren could contend for more race wins this season depending on the venue.

After a difficult weekend in Zandvoort where its drivers struggled to perform among the top ten, McLaren unexpectedly popped to the top at Monza where Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris delivered to the team its first 1-2 since 2010.

However, there was more to come from the Woking-based outfit, with Lando Norris snatching a remarkable pole position in Russia and coming within three laps of achieving a stunning consecutive win for his team.

The progress of McLaren's Mercedes-powered MCL35M is undeniable although its performance still lacks consistency and appears to be pegged to specific circuits.

"I think they’ve obviously made great progress this year, certain circuits they seem to perform well at and others that are more challenging for them," Horner said.

"Lando Norris deserved to win the race (in Sochi) but I’m sure there’ll be some circuits between now and the end of the year that they’ll fare well at."

In the wake of  McLaren's sensational 1-2 at Monza, Norris said that he doubted his team would find itself in the winners' circle again in the back-half of the season.

But after his show-stopping display in Sochi, the Briton revised somewhat his outlook.

"I think places like America will be good for us," he said, quoted by Motorsport.com.

"Abu Dhabi was good for us last year, but this year, maybe not so good, because they're changing the track layout. So for us, it's maybe not so good.

"In Mexico, I think we can also be quite strong, but it's so difficult to know. I guess in Russia, we maybe didn't expect to be as good as we were and maybe in Zandvoort, we didn't expect to be as bad as we were.

"So even now, so late in the season, we're still learning about the car, we're still learning what makes it fast and what makes it slow, and what we can learn from that for 2022, for next season, on how can we make sure we're just not slow and always fast."

• Read also: McLaren still has 'deficits in all areas', says Seidl

As for Red Bull's end-of-season prospects amid its fierce title battle with Mercedes, Horner believes the remaining seven rounds will favour each team "50-50".

"I don’t think there are any circuits that stand out as strongly as Russia and Monza, but for sure Mercedes will be strong," he said.

"They won in Turkey last year, they’ll be strong there. But then we start going to Austin where we should be there or thereabouts. Brazil, Mexico we’ve always been strong.

"We don’t know anything about Qatar, we don’t know anything about Jeddah, then Abu Dhabi.

"You could say it’s 50-50 in what’s left on the table in what favors slightly one more team than the other."

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