Vandoorne starts the Hungarian GP weekend with a fresh chassis

Following grip issues with his car, Stoffel Vandoorne will get a new chassis, hoping that the change will erase the technical woes which have dogged him since the British GP.

The Belgian driver revealed that after good feeling in the German GP, his McLaren race car has not felt right since the first lap at Silverstone. The team then realized at Hockenheim that Vandoorne's car was showing signs of aerodynamic losses compared to his team-mate Fernando Alonso's machine. The British squad changed multiple parts for the third practice session in Germany, but the series of alterations did not bring the expected results.

“For them it was clear to see on the data that something was going on, but it was hard to know exactly what part was causing it, so we first started to change a lot of the bits on the car and make sure there was nothing wrong with the build, but whatever we did it still had the same problem," Vandoorne is quoted as saying by formula1.com.

The 26-year-old driver said that he asked his team to change the entire chassis because the swap of car elements did not cure the technical woes.

“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 was one of the last pieces remaining. 

Vandoorne is currently 16h in the Drivers' Championship after having scored eight points in total in the Australian, Bahrain and Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Since Monaco, round 6 of the championship, the Belgian failed to score any points. In contrast to that, his team-mate Fernando Alonso has already 40 championship units to his name, having scored them in seven different races.