Stoffel Vandoorne is confident about his future with McLaren

The start of the season for Stoffel Vandoorne has not been the easiest with a car, particularly an engine, far from the standards of the category. Additionally, he has to contend with direct competition from Fernando Alonso, often considered the best driver on the grid.

But the adaptation period is coming to an end as the rookie feels more and more comfortable in his single-seater: « I feel increasingly at ease over the past few weekends. This doesn’t necessarily show on the results sheet, but I think we’re moving forward. »

Thus Austria was a bright spot in the young driver’s season, with a 12th place finish: « We expected to be a bit more competitive there, with a small circuit and few turns. The chassis worked very well. From the first practice sessions, we were quite competitive. »

If he finally finished this alpine test in 12th place, he was hindered in his progress by a penalty for not letting Kimi Räikkönen pass quickly enough: « Honestly, it was necessary to try something. During the tire change, you have to try everything to get the most out of it in order to attempt the undercut. At that moment, we were battling with Palmer. When the Ferrari was behind us, we were trying to get the most out of the new tires. I may have taken too long to move aside, but I had to try something because we knew it would be my only opportunity in the race. » He thus believes that he only lost a little time but would probably not have been able to do better than 12th at the end of the race.

For this home race for the team, expectations are unfortunately not very high since Silverstone puts a heavy demand on the F1 engine, which remains the Achilles’ heel of the Woking team: « Difficult to say where we will be. On our side, we just need to optimize the car setup with what we have learned in the last races. »

But in general, the Belgian still sees many more years at Woking and feels calm about his future: « There is nothing to worry about. I have a multi-year contract with the team. I am very happy here. Everything is moving in the right direction from a performance perspective. We are working very hard with the team. I spend a lot of time at the factory with the engineers and aerodynamicists to move forward. I am focusing solely on that. »

We can only hope that this period of lean times does not last forever for a driver who has been able to show the extent of his talent by dominating the GP2 championship two years ago.

From our special correspondent in Silverstone