McLaren feared Verstappen’s triple-stop pace but stayed sharp, securing a flawless one-two in a race full of strategic tension.
Andrea Stella praised his team’s performance and the one-two finish secured by Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris in Spain. The McLaren F1 Team Principal expressed reassurance over the competitiveness of the Woking car, describing it as another perfect result for the team.
“We end this triple-header of European Grands Prix with a strong performance in Barcelona, once again confirming the competitiveness of the MCL39,” said Stella. “Throughout the weekend, the drivers and the team were able to extract a very high level of performance from the car.”
“That allowed us to take this one-two, our third of the season. The team executed the strategy and pit stops perfectly, making what could have been a very tense race feel very smooth.”
The Italian admitted that McLaren had not anticipated Verstappen being so fast due to his three-stop strategy: “When we saw Verstappen pit, we figured it would be a three-stop – and we thought it wouldn’t be an issue since we had already overtaken him on track.”
“We believed we had a significant pace advantage. But in reality, he was fast. He was very fast, in fact, and when we switched to the medium tyres in the second stint, we pushed and tried to control the pace, but he caught up very quickly. Quicker than expected.”
“At one point, we even asked our drivers to push harder. And both of them replied that they weren’t sure they had much more pace. At that stage, we were a bit concerned that the situation might be more open than expected during the first stint.”
“It could also have been tricky for us because, at one point, Oscar and Lando were about 2.5 seconds apart. If we had needed to cover Verstappen, it might have been slightly problematic. But fortunately, he started to lose a bit of pace.”
“Oscar regained good pace at the end of the second stint. That allowed us to manage the sequence of pit stops in a controlled manner. Credit to the drivers and our tyre engineers. Overall, I think the race was well executed.”
The need to push in order to defend against Verstappen played a role in tyre degradation and overheating: “Yes, that impacted us, while the front-left tyre was also prone to wear. Lando reported some graining on his front tyres during the race.”
“With a three-stopping car as fast as Max’s, you have to push with a two-stop car over long stints. Sometimes tyre wear can be a bit unpredictable.”
“If you look at the race and the times at the beginning of the stint, you can see that we were very careful not to push too hard early on. If you push too much at the start of the stint, you risk degradation at the end – which is ultimately what happened to Verstappen.”
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