McLaren are swapping chassis in an effort to lift their young driver Stoffel Vandoorne who has endured a torrid second season in Formula 1 this year, comprehensively outperformed by his teammate Fernando Alonso.
The MCL33 has proved to be a lemon of a car. It's a toss-up between McLaren and Williams for the 'prize' of worst car on the grid this year.
Vandoorne confirmed to reporters ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend, "Yes, we have swapped the chassis. It's not a brand new one, it's one we've used before but that's not a problem at all. I was pushing the team for it."
"Obviously what we did over the past couple of races, we started to change a lot of parts and there came a point where we nearly did everything we could and that [the chassis] was one of the last pieces remaining."
"It's not easy for the team to do that, especially when it's a back-to-back race. But they've managed it. They saw already from Silverstone that there was something going on but it was hard to tell that it is a chassis-related issue."
FP1 and FP2 at Hungaroring will reveal if indeed the problem with the Belgian driver's wayward form is a result of his chassis.
The 26-year-old explained, "At the moment we haven't driven the car yet, so we don't know yet. But we've kind of done everything now to remove the doubt."
"You start thinking about everything, but at some point there were sessions where I couldn't even match one corner to Fernando anymore. And then you know, if you can't even match one corner, you know there is a problem on the car," added Vandoorne
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