A season that had started off in the best way for McLaren: third place in the Constructors’ Championship for the team, P3 ahead of Bottas and Perez in the drivers’ standings for Lando Norris; took a turn worse over the last triple header.

“I'm very happy with how the season went despite bad luck from time to time, but also there are things we could have done better and we have to learn from,” Team Principal Andreas Seidl told media including MotorLat after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Losing P3 in the Constructors to Ferrari was rather “painful” especially after holding into it for more than half season, nonetheless it was a year full of positives for McLaren who also managed to bring home a 1-2 victory at the Italian Grand Prix.

“We made a big step forward again with the car in terms of getting closer with the lap times in quali and in the race to Mercedes and RedBull and we were even in a position to occasionally challenge them at the tracks suiting our car,” he said.

“A very good season” both in terms of reliability, speed of the pit stops and team building for the future.

“The way we work together as a team was clearly for me the next step, which is the most important thing for me to see because we made a major reset to the team two years ago in terms of organisation and culture,” explained Seidl.

“We created our stability which hadn't been there before at McLaren for several years. We have a great team in place, we have all the talent in place that I think we need in order to take the next step. Now we simply need time, we are ambitious of course, but at the same time we need time to see the results of that.”

“We just need to keep going that way, we just need to our infrastructures in place in the next two years and then I'm very optimistic that we can take these next steps.”

A big step they took in Woking this season was going from the Renault PU they had been using since 2018 to Mercedes engines, that are set to power the McLaren single seaters until at least 2024.

“One very important thing this year was as well to get the partnership with Mercedes up and running. It was very important this year, before the new technical regulations come in place, because that means we could gain a lot of experience this year already with the Mercedes Power Unit.”

“That puts us in a better position designing a completely new car for next year knowing already the Mercedes Power Unit. So that was a job really well done as well on both sides, on our side but also on the Mercedes side.”

Looking back on full of growth but quite challenging year, Seidl concluded with a comment on the team and all the efforts put in place to make things run smoothly.

“Big thank you really to every single member of the team for all the hard work everyone has put in, for the commitment. It was again a tough season, we still had to operate back at the factory and here [in the paddock] under all these covid policies.”

“But I'm very pleased with how the team was coping with these challenges and how we always kept the spirit up. And of course celebrating highlights like the double victory in Monza after such a long time for McLaren it was the best possible reward for everyone in the team.”