McLaren hoped to score 'one or two points' at 2022 F1 Miami GP until the safety car

McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl recently revealed that the team did not hold expectations for a result higher than an eighth place at last weekend's inaugural Miami Grand Prix, given Mercedes' significant pace advantage on the track. He claimed that had Pierre Gasly not collided with Lando Norris and brought out the safety car, the team would likely have scored at least a point or two.

As reported by Motorsport, Seidl explained his expectations for the team going into the race and how the safety car impacted their final result, saying:

“We knew before the race that eighth place would probably be our maximum. Because we knew that Mercedes was faster than us and [Valtteri] Bottas was quick here too. In the end, we would have had a small advantage on the hard tires [compared to Fernando Alonso, Pierre Gasly, Mick Schumacher, and Kevin Magnussen, who switched from mediums to hard tires later]. We might have gotten a point or two, but unfortunately the incident robbed us of all chances.”

With Norris out of the race and a thirteenth-place finish for Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren took home zero points from the Miami GP. This made for a disappointing weekend following their first podium of the season with the former's third-place finish at Imola.

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Lando Norris hopes that McLaren will make enough improvements to compete with Mercedes

Lando Norris feels that McLaren is comfortably fighting Alpine and AlphaTauri. He, however, claimed they still lack pace when compared to Mercedes and Alfa Romeo, two teams that he would like to challenge soon.

As reported by Motorsport, Norris estimated that he has the fifth/sixth-fastest car on the grid, saying:

“Hopefully we can just make some more improvements with the car. It’s tough to know exactly what we’re going to do from this weekend. We’re behind Mercedes. We’re behind Alfa Romeo. But we’re in a good fight with Alpine and AlphaTauri. I think that’s quite simple. Haas are there or thereabouts with us as well. So it’s close. I think that puts us around fifth, fifth-fastest or sixth or something. We have decent pace. We just need a little bit more to be able to, say take the fight to the Mercedes and the guys ahead. And then we can be happy if we do that.”

Meanwhile, team principal Andreas Seidl emphasized that a lot can change in terms of development for all teams over the course of the season. Speaking about McLaren's learnings from the races so far, he said:

“It’s still early in the season with these new cars. Everybody is still working on the weaknesses of their cars, and I think we have seen now when we look at these first races that in conditions like here [in Miami], tracks like here, tracks like Bahrain, we definitely struggled more than at other tracks like Melbourne and Imola. We know about these weaknesses. That’s why we work hard back home to address these weaknesses. That’s what we have to focus on.”

The Woking-based team currently stands fourth in the constructors' standings, but Mercedes has been swiftly increasing the points gap between the two teams.