Will Vandoorne still be driving for McLaren in 2019?
With the summer break arriving, the silly season is in full swing. One driver who should give even more after the break is Stoffel Vandoorne as he only got 8 points so far in 2018.
0-12, that's Stoffel Vandoorne's qualifying statistic against Fernando Alonso. He didn't even made it to Q3 once this year. His race statistics doesn't look better as he finished just 3 times in the points this season ( 3 DNF's ). Compared to his teammate, Alonso finished all races in the points were he saw the checkered flag ( 4 DNF's, 8 point finishes ). Till now he is 16th in the championship standings whilst Alonso runs in the Top 10. We could continue to compare these two but we also have to admit that Alonso is in Formula 1 for such a long time and it's only Vandoorne's second season. Nevertheless there were some names who could driver for McLaren next season like Carlos Sainz Jr. or Kimi Raikkonen and also there test drivers Lando Norris – who battles for the F2 title in his first season – and Nyck de Vries ( won Race 1 in Hungary ).
Lately Stoffel provided a little update on his problems as McLaren found what they though would be the problem. The new chassis.
Since Silverstone it went even worse for Vandoorne as he couldn't keep up with the other drivers. So the team decided so change the chassis and race with a used one, but that shouldn't bother him much more as it has proven in the past. The McLaren driver said that the team did everything they could to identify the problem and even though they know it's because of the chassis, they don't know why it didn't work. Once the problems arrived with the British GP they was no grip and the set up was unpleasant.
With his team trying to solve the problem, Vandoorne just hopes that it will get better – and as we saw in Hungary, besides his gearbox problem, he ran in the Top 10 for a long time. He also mentioned that he never doubted himself but he also admitted that he thought it was his fault. But as he couldn't keep up with Alonso in the corners he knew it was up to his car.
Surely he has to prove himself in the second half of the season and as I mentioned above Alonso is leading the intern team duel by far. It's also clear that there are many rumors at this time of the season but the only realistic one till now would be Lando Norris, who maybe needs more time to get into F1 as he is only 18 years old.
It will be interesting to see who will race for McLaren in 2019 with also many rumors about the person of Fernando Alonso.