The Bahrain Grand Prix started in frustrating fashion for Belgian racer Stoffel Vandoorne and his McLaren-Honda team, when a water-pressure issue was detected in his car on the way to the grid.
Unfortunately the problem could not be fixed in time for Stoffel to make the start of the race and the team had no choice but to remove the car from the grid.
Therefore Stoffel did not have the opportunity to repeat the one race he contested here in 2016.
“It's a real shame that we weren't even able to start the race,” he said. “The team discovered a water-pressure issue on the way to the grid. It's disappointing, obviously, that we come all the way here and can't even start the race.”
“We knew from the beginning of the season that the situation we were in was going to be difficult. I have an extremely good relationship with the team, I believe that we'll get on top of these issues, and I'm confident that I can do a good job when everything comes together. We're going through a hard time – it's not fun for us to go through this – but this is what it is at the moment, and today shows that.”
“It's frustrating when you do all the preparation work, put in so much effort, we drivers train a lot to keep fit to be able to go racing, and then not being able to start is a shame. It's been an extremely difficult weekend for me, having two failures on Friday in FP1 and FP2, and now in the race: it's obviously very disappointing."
"But I'll keep my head down, I'll work hard with the team, and I'm sure there will be some improvements at some point. When they will be, it's difficult to say, but I'm confident that they'll come. We've lost quite a bit of mileage so it's definitely not an ideal situation, and we need to make a good step forward soon. Hopefully we can show that at some point in the next few races.”
