It will take McLaren “some years” before it can bridge the “huge gap” to Mercedes and retu꧟rn to fighting at the front of the Formula 1 grid, accordi𒁏ng to team principal Andreas Seidl. 

McLaren followed up a strong 2019 campaign by securing its best result of the V6 hybrid era as it returned to F1’s 🐬top three in the constructors’ championship for the first time since 2012 having successfully overhauled Racing Point into third place at the final race of the 2020 season in Abu Dhabi.

The Woking outfit will revive its former partnershi𝕴p with Mercedes by taking on the German manufacturer’s power units for 2021, while it has signed Daniel Ricciardo from Renault to partner Lando Norris as it looks to maintain its position at the front of F1’s midfield pack. 

Despite McLaren’s impressive improvements, Seidl has urged his side to remain grounded, cautioning that the British outfit is still playing catch up in terms of organisation and inf🐼rastructure compared to the leading teams.

“I think we need to stay realistic despite the goo🌄d outcome on the championship s🌟ide with P3,” Seidl said. 

“We know exactly where we are. There is still a huge gap to the cars in front, especially to the Mercedes car. I think the most important thing first of all, is to see that the team, this year, under the leadership of James Key has produced a very competi✤tive car, a great step forward compared to last year.

“It was great to see also that 🐠despite all of the challenges with the pandemic, that the team kept pushing flat out back home in engineering and production to continuously bring updates to the track, which inꦅ the end kept improving the performance of the car.

“But we know what the gap to the Mercedes is, that’s not something we will close from one🏅 year to the next year. We still know that we have a lot of deficits within the team in terms of organisation and infrastructure, which we need to close first, but again we have a clear pla𒈔n of how we want to reduce these deficits. 

“It will ta🎉ke time, but I’m confident that if we do the right th꧙ings on the team side, we can close these gaps in some years.”

Seidl warned that McLaren must not “get carri🍌ed away” with its success in 2020 and must remain focused on what is set to be another close midfield battle in 2021.

“With the results we were collecting, it helped to keep the spirit up within the team, to get through t♚hese challenges together as one team together with all🐬 the support we got also from home,” he explained. 

“It’s simply important to, again, not get carried away with it and it✨ is important to make sure that we get the next steps in place for the integration of the Mercedes power unit. It is a big job that first needs to be finished and then, hopefully, we hit the track straightway in good shape.

“We get a new driver line-up also with✨ Daniel [Ricciardo] coming in. It is great for us to get a reference like Daniel, a proven race winner who has shown in the past that he can win races with having the right material.

“Then we simply have to keep working on o🥀urselves as a team to keep improving.”