Vandoorne: We haven't progressed at all

Until now the quiet-spoken Belgian has been tight-lipped about his woes but has finally come out and blamed his car for poor form that has relegated him to an also-ran toiling away at the wrong end of the field.

Speaking to reporters after an abysmal home race Belgian Grand Prix weekend, Vandoorne was clearly distressed, "It's difficult to get a worse weekend. We've seen the performance we have is very far away from being good. There's not really an explanation."

"The reality is we haven't progressed since the start of the year, we haven't progressed at all compared to the others."

With regards to his home race, Vandoorne said, "I was last in every session with a lot of problems this weekend. It's a shame I do not have a better car to give something more to the fans."

"We tried to do something different with the strategy, tried to pit behind the safety car, and unfortunately that didn't really pay off. The race, in general, was quite boring for everyone. There were not many overtakes and for us no miracles," lamented the Belgian.

After the race at Spa-Francorchamps, his new boss Gil de Ferran appeared to sympathise with his drivers' complaints, "With Stoffel, we soldiered on as best we could, but we were unable to overcome our pace deficit."

Nevertheless, speculation is rife that Vandoorne will lose his seat before the season ends, with the team's up-and-coming youngster Lando Norris a candidate to replace him.

The Formula 2 driver was given an FP1 outing at Spa and impressed enough to get another go on Friday morning at Monza.

De Ferran gave feedback on Norris' 90-minutes in the car last Friday at Spa, "He did a great job. I didn’t have much exposure to him prior to this year. I certainly knew about his results but not much else."

“One thing he certainly has is he adapts himself very quickly to new situations. I’ve seen that in the tests he’s had and the same thing happened here."

“As part of his development we wanted to bring him here with a lower downforce level, a lot more cars on track, a lot of track evolution, we wanted to give him that experience."

“It was the same thing, he came up to speed very quickly and did a fine job for us, didn’t make any mistakes, he was absolutely fine. He will be in at Monza in FP1 as we continue to help him develop his skills,” added de Ferran.

Meanwhile, on another front, Force India's team ownership change has revved up the Silly Season as talk of Esteban Ocon making way for Lance Stroll in the team now owned by the Racing Point consortium led by his billionaire father Lawrence Stroll.

Should this happen there is a chance Ocon may find refuge with McLaren at the expense of Vandoorne, although the sensible thing - should the need to have Stroll in pink be so urgent - would be to swap Ocon with Stroll, but sensible and Formula 1 politics tend to be poles apart.

Vandoorne's days with McLaren appear to be numbered, but his manager Alunni Bravi insists, "I give him a 100 percent chance to be in Formula 1 next year."

If there is to be salvation for Vandoorne's F1 career it is most likely to come from Sauber chief Frederic Vasseur who managed the Belgian through the junior ranks including the 2015 GP2 championship title and rates the 26-year-old very highly.