McLaren F1 Team Principal Andrea Stella believes that rivals Red Bull are inventing an ‘underdog’ narrative by going toe-to-toe on pole positions and wins this season.
Max Verstappen and Red Bull have chipped away and kept McLaren at their feet. The Dutchman went bar-for-bar against the duo of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. Quite the feat considering the general consensus of McLaren being the best car on the grid.
But for Stella, the narrative that Red Bull are ‘underdogs’ and that they’re lagging behind the rest up front is not convincing him.
“Red Bull are very good at making fast cars, exceptionally good at driving fast cars and they are extremely good also in creating the narrative to their advantage.”
He believes that Red Bull is making the opportunity to pin all expectations on McLaren. He implied that when Red Bull performs, they can claim it as a miracle.
“They exploit every possible opportunity to stay in the competition and some of these opportunities are to sometimes create the narrative like: ‘Oh, we are making miracles here, the others should win every single practice session and qualifying and race’.
Stella said that they are combing through the noise and are only going to focus on what they need to improve as a team.
“This is the narrative created by some of our competitors, which we read occasionally and then we change the page, and we focus on ourselves. We look at the facts, we look at what we should be improving and there’s a lot that we should be improving.
“So for me when I look at the facts. I also look at what Lando and Oscar deliver and deliver quite consistently, so yeah, well done to Red Bull even in terms of the way they manage their non-technical opportunities.”
