Seidl wants McLaren to restart windtunnel plan ‘as quickly as possible’

McLaren F1 boss Andreas Seidl hopes to see the team resume its windtunnel construction plans as quickly as possible as the infrastructure is crucial to the outfit’s ambitions of moving back to the front of the grid.

McLaren put its windtunnel project on hold after the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic and its financial impact on the McLaren Group.

The company has since secured funding to weather the current crisis – including a recent £150 million loan from the National Bank of Bahrain – but with the future still unclear for McLaren Racing in terms of revenue given the uncertainty surrounding the second half of the F1 season, the team is sparingly managing its cash and still deferring its infrastructure investments.

“At the beginning of this crisis we simply had to put on hold all the infrastructure projects we were working on,” Seidl told the media on Tuesday.

“Even now, not knowing exactly how the income will look like during this year, we are still cautious there, and simply have to wait until we have the green light there again.

“As you can imagine I’m pushing hard to get these different infrastructure measures in place again as quickly as possible.

“We all know this will be key in our journey back to the front in Formula 1 as we have a deficit there compared to the top teams.

“I’m quite optimistic once we are through this crisis we get back on track with our infrastructure as well.”

While McLaren is taking a cautious approach to its expenditures, the team will still bring a few upgrades to Austria this week for its MCL35.

“The financial challenges we were in, and also with the measures we took in place quite early on with the pay cuts and the furlough, which was in parallel with the shutdown, to be honest didn’t really affect our output for this year or for next year,” he added.

“We are planning to bring updates regularly from Austria onwards on the car, and at the same time we are flat out in getting next year’s car ready with the biggest topic being the integration of the Mercedes power unit.”