McLaren's team principal Andreas Seidl has now conceded that Ferrari is a threat to McLaren's stranglehold of third place in the constructor's championship.

Speaking to selected members of the media, which included MotorLat.com, Seidl believes that McLaren will be in for a season-long battle with Ferrari after the Maranello based team outscored McLaren in today's Spanish Grand Prix with Daniel Ricciardo finishing sixth and Lando Norris eighth. 

"If you look at our weekend where we started seventh and ninth and finish sixth and eighth, I think you need to be happy with the results, so I am happy with the outcome of the race as we scored import points, but at the same time we need to acknowledge that Ferrari was simply stronger than us this weekend, as they had a good car and was strong on this kind of track layout, so I am happy with the race I think it was good to see in terms of execution of the race from the team side and terms of strategy and in terms of pit stops we had a good race."

"It's was a good battle today with Ferrari, and it will be important to keep bringing upgrades to the car in the upcoming races in order to keep this battle for P3 alive; it's good that we are still third despite us struggling a little bit this weekend, but we're expecting a season-long battle with Ferrari."

Seidl also praised Ricciardo's performance in Spain after the Australian finished in sixth place after a race-long battle with Red Bull's Sergio Perez, with Seidl believing that Ricciardo is on the verge of producing more consistent performances after a difficult winter which saw the Australian get a limited amount of testing time over the winter.

"It was good to see that Daniel had found a lot more confidence with the car this weekend and had a perfect race today; considering Daniel's character, it wasn't a surprise how he approached these challenging first few races with us."

"We knew that it is a challenge to change teams over the winter with the limited amount of testing time it is a challenge to get used to the car and to become one with the car, I will say we're not there where Daniel or we want to be yet, but as I've said many times, I am a 100% per cent convinced that it's just a matter of doing more races together before we see the performances that were used to seeing from Daniel."