McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has shared his opinions on the variation in pace between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in different stages of the opening stint and Max Verstappen’s dominant victory at the F1 Italian GP on Sunday.
How the race unfolded for the McLaren drivers
The McLaren duo qualified in the top three behind pole-sitter Max Verstappen. Despite facing the threat of a possible Q2 exit, Norris recovered well to set the second-fastest time in Q3 ahead of his teammate.
Verstappen and Norris went wheel-to-wheel almost immediately off the line in Sunday’s race. After cutting the first chicane to keep the lead, the Dutchman gave up the position to the Brit at the start of the second lap to avoid a potential penalty. Nonetheless, the reigning champion took only a couple more laps to reclaim P1 and surge clear of the rest of the field.
In the meantime, after losing out to Charles Leclerc at the start, Piastri fought back with a fantastic overtake around the outside of Lesmo 1. On Lap 2, the Australian was contemplating a move on the Red Bull, only to get caught in a Turn 1 bottleneck and slip down to P4. The battle for third place continued for a few tours before Piastri finally reclaimed the spot on Lap 6.
Thereafter, Norris and Piastri settled into a steady rhythm, with no credible threat from behind. Both drivers extended their stints on the mediums considerably, and the 24-year-old headed into the pits first on Lap 45 for a set of used soft tyres.
Unfortunately, a slow stop for Norris on the subsequent lap allowed Piastri to sweep past and move into second place. This debacle prompted the McLaren pit wall to instruct the current championship leader to relinquish his position.
While the two cars were free to race to the finish, Piastri ultimately crossed the line in third, just 2.144s behind his teammate and championship rival. Meanwhile, much to McLaren’s chagrin, Verstappen registered a dominant win by a whopping margin of 19.207s to his next-best rival, Norris.
Extent of tyre usage impacted pace in opening stint
Speaking in a print media session after the F1 race, Andrea Stella commented on how Piastri was able to bridge his gap to Norris towards the end of their opening stints in Sunday’s Italian GP.
Singling out tyre usage as the primary factor, the 54-year-old claimed that both Verstappen and Norris had pushed their medium tyres harder than Piastri in the early stages of the race.
Noting that Verstappen had maximised the pace of his yellow-walled tyres early on to build a sizable gap, Stella elaborated that Norris suffered more degradation between the McLaren drivers as he attempted to keep up with the Dutchman in the first stint.
“I think there’s a couple of reasons for the difference of pace between the two drivers in different stages of the stint.
“One of the reasons is how much you want to push your tyres.
“I think Verstappen did push the tyres at the start of the stint. He was faster. Like today, Verstappen was faster, that’s why he was able to overtake Lando [Norris], and then he was able to open a gap, but he was pushing the tyres.
“And then I think in this situation, the tyres get a little hot, the wear kicks in, and then you lose some performance at the end of the stint.
“That’s also why Verstappen pitted before us, and that’s also why Lando had a little bit more degradation than Oscar [Piastri]. So Lando was faster at the start. He was trying to minimise the loss to Verstappen, he used the tyres a bit more at the start, and he had a bit of price at the end.
“It’s like the tyres have a relatively limited budget, and it depends where you use it.”
Shift in balance extended tyre life considerably on race day
Highlighting the shift in balance they had experienced on Sunday in comparison to the practice sessions, Andrea Stella further explained that the lack of graining and more rear degradation allowed the teams to substantially extend their stints on the medium and hard tyres at the F1 Italian GP.
“In addition to that, today the balance was slightly different to what we had in practice.
“There was much more rear degradation than front. There wasn’t much graining at all. That’s also why the tyres could go for so long in the race, which was beyond our expected life and performance of the tyres.”
Verstappen’s dominance at Monza was unexpected
In terms of whether he had anticipated such a dominant performance from Verstappen ahead of the race weekend, Andrea Stella confessed that the outcome of the F1 Italian GP surprised him.
Stating that he didn’t expect McLaren to maintain the considerable pace advantage they had over the rest of the field in the previous two races, the Italian admitted that their massive gap to Verstappen at the chequered flag was rather confounding.
“Well, I have to admit here that while we were expecting not to be as dominant as we were in Hungary and Zandvoort, we did not expect to have this kind of gap to any of our competitors.
“We thought we would still be like potentially, hopefully, as competitive, as fast as anybody else.
“But we have to admit that yesterday Red Bull were one or two tenths faster than us and probably today they were a little bit more than that, faster than us, considering that Verstappen was in condition to overtake Lando and considering how much he was opening the gap in the first stint.”
McLaren seek to make their car competitive at all circuits
Andrea Stella also surmised that Red Bull’s characteristic aerodynamic efficiency whilst on lower downforce levels allowed Verstappen to lap over two tenths faster than the McLaren drivers in Sunday’s Italian GP.
Furthermore, emphasising their limitations at a low-downforce track like Monza and Ferrari’s victory over them last year, the McLaren team principal proclaimed that they intend to work on their core design philosophy and make their car suitable for all circuits on the F1 calendar.
“There may be some technical reasons why that is the case. I think we have seen that anytime Red Bull has gone on a low level of drag, so small rear wings, they seem to retain a lot of aerodynamic efficiency.
“And I think I explained yesterday that we design our car not in this regime, but in a different regime. But this tends to follow a trend that we also had last year.
“So I think for us, in terms of fundamental design, there is certainly a lesson to be learned because we don’t want to be competitive only in a certain category of circuits. We want to be competitive in all circuits.”
