McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella has praised the performance of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris after the squad brought home another 1-2 result in the Spanish Grand Prix, a race in which he admitted they had faced a “degree of risk” by sticking to a two-stop strategy.
Piastri made a strong start from pole to hold the lead, while Norris initially lost out on second place to Max Verstappen before retaking the position a little later on. With Verstappen embarking on a three-stop plan, some concerns remained over whether the Dutchman could pose a threat in the latter stages should he be running on fresher tyres than the papaya cars.
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However, the race took another turn in the final third when a Safety Car was called, meaning that the majority of the field pitted – but the fact that Verstappen’s Red Bull was fitted with hard tyres, in comparison to those around him on softs, saw his race unravel. Piastri, meanwhile, sealed his fifth win of the season so far, crossing the line 2.471s ahead of Norris.
While it may have looked smooth from the outside, Stella explained some of the challenges posed in the Grand Prix as he commented afterwards: “In the second stint, we were pushing, controlling the pace and he [Verstappen] was catching up very rapidly, more rapidly than we hoped for.
Piastri made a strong start from pole as the Spanish Grand Prix got underway, while Norris initially lost P2 to Verstappen
“So, at some stage we even asked our drivers like, ‘We should push more’, and both gave answers like, ‘I’m not sure I have much more pace than this’. So, at that stage we were a little worried that it could have been a situation more open than we thought it would be in the first stint.
“At some stage it would have also been tricky for us because we had Oscar and Lando that were like 2.5 seconds apart or something. So, if we needed to cover Verstappen it would have been a bit of a problem with them. But thankfully Verstappen started to tail off a bit.
“Oscar found quite a lot of pace at the end of the second stint and this allowed us to go through the pit stop sequence in a controlled way. So, I think well done to the drivers from this respect, but well done to our tyre engineers, and overall, I think this was a good execution of today’s race.”
Pushed on whether he still believed that the two-stop strategy was quicker – after seeing what Verstappen was able to do on a scheduled three-stop – Stella added: “I think a two-stop is faster.
“It comes with some risks in relation to the fact that when you have such a fast three-stopper, you need to push on a two-stop, so you need to push on long stints, and sometimes it’s a little unpredictable how much your tyres will go off.
“If you look at the race trace, if you look at the times at the start of the stint, we were very careful not to push too much at the start of the stint, because if you push too much at the start of the stint, then you’re going to have some degradation at the end.
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“Ultimately it’s what happened with Verstappen I think, in what will have been his second or third stint, maybe the third, he pushed so much but then at some stage it tailed off.
“It’s a limited budget, you have to just decide where you use it, but on a two-stop you are much more exposed if your tyres go off, then you have to stay on it – and it’s quite brutal when they go off. I think the two-stop is faster, but with some degree of risk.”
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And in terms of whether the fact that Norris found himself stuck behind Verstappen for the opening laps took more energy from the tyres in relation to Piastri, Stella took a moment to acknowledge how Piastri had progressed in comparison to the difficult weekend that the Australian faced at the same venue 12 months earlier.
The team boss explained: “Yes, you do have to use your tyres more [when behind another car], because you are following, and when you are following, aerodynamics reduces, so you have to extract from the tyres what you lose from an aerodynamic point of view, which could be easily like half a second that you extract more from the tyres, so I think, yes, more tyre consumption for Lando in the first stint.
“But overall I have to say that the two drivers today were in a way, quite surprisingly, pretty much going in parallel throughout the entire race. I think Oscar has done a really impressive job considering that last year this was one of the most difficult races for him, so he’s gone really a long way forward in 12 months.”
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