McLaren F1 Dodges Risky Moves as Title Chase Heats Up

McLaren F1 adjusts its tactics, shunning risky strategies to solidify its standing in the title race.

Andrea Stella, the director of McLaren F1, believes that Oscar Piastri could have completed the race with a single pit stop. This was considered during the race at Spa-Francorchamps, but the Woking team did not dare to attempt it, although George Russell made it work in the race.

“In terms of whether we could do it, yes, in hindsight, we thought we weren’t convinced it would work,” Stella said. “And if such a strategy doesn’t work, it can become very painful.”

“Because then it’s too late to return to the pits and you risk losing many positions. I think if you commit to this path and it doesn’t work, you risk ruining your race.”

The Italian explained two reasons why the race was not perfectly anticipated and why it was harder to execute certain things: “With Oscar, we thought we had a good pace, and we were able to make a more conventional stop to regain positions.”

“There were two different factors from our initial expectations. The fact that tire degradation was lower than expected, but especially that overtaking was more difficult. This surprised us, and when you had a bit of an advantage on the tires, it still wasn’t enough to overtake.”

“Because we saw with Lewis [Hamilton] and Russell, I don’t think the positions were frozen. That’s why I understood, it’s simply that with the effect of dirty air, it wasn’t possible to overtake as easily as we thought.”

Stella acknowledges that now being in the position of a title-contending constructor, McLaren must exercise caution: “I think in Russell’s position, there was potentially more motivation to adopt a risky approach, even if it didn’t work.”

“But for us, we want to think in a somewhat more solid manner, and we see today that we have again scored better than Red Bull, with a 43-point deficit. I think we need to be a bit cautious with adventurous strategies which, in hindsight, proved good today.”

Asked whether Lando Norris should have mirrored Russell’s strategy, Stella admits it might have worked better for the British driver, who lost places at the start and never managed to overtake Max Verstappen.

“I need to review that, I must say. Potentially, I need to understand if Lando was in the right position to do it, because obviously, after extending, you tend to lose positions on the track. For us, the plan with Lando was solid. It’s just that we were a bit surprised we couldn’t overtake.”

“The other thing, where we were surprised, and this might also be related to Verstappen’s quality as a driver, is that he made the Medium last in the final stint. As he made the medium last in the last stint, like few other drivers managed to do.”

“We simply expected his tires to collapse, and that wasn’t the case. We therefore thought that overtaking Verstappen would have been easy, and it turned out not to be the case. I will need to review if, with Lando, it would have been a good idea to simply follow what Russell was doing.”