McLaren Team director Andrea Stella says that Max Verstappen is definitely back in the title fight after his victory in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
The victory of Verstappen in Baku was his second consecutive after the Italian Grand Prix in Monza, and came in a race where championship leader Oscar Piastri crashed in the opening round. With Verstappen still 69 points on Drift from Piastri, but after taking 35 points out of the lead of the Australians during the last two races, Stella says that Red Bull’s performance improvement makes the defending defense a real threat.
“I think Singapore should be a return to the type of circuit characteristics with which we should express the full potential of our car,” Stella told SiriusXM. “However, I think that what Red Bull is showing at the moment is not only related to the circuits.
“I think they have made a real improvement. They had upgrades in Monza. They seem to have found a way to exploit these upgrades with the setup. I said that [after qualifying] All that Max and Red Bull will be regular contenders for the victories, and certainly Max is a candidate for the driver’s championship.
“So there is a lot of work ahead. We have to stay focused, improve and we will go again.”
Stella says that the fact that Lando Norris was limited to seventh place in Azerbaijan is a sign that the McLaren is being defeated at a pure pace, despite a dirty weekend of the team.
“The number we knew was not necessarily the most suitable for the strengths of our car, but somehow we did not capitalize in the potential that was available. In the race the car was not fast enough to catch up, so Lando spent all the race in traffic.
“There is some work to do to improve the car, or this year we have to look at the setup, [because] There will be no more developments. I also think there is something to learn because we seem to be able to design to design very fast cars for a kind of circuits, but if we have this kind of braking and short corners, we struggle a bit.
“So as I said, learn a lot for the drivers and for the team, and then we also have to look at the operations. The pit stop was again not fast and we had a number of problems with reliability in practice. So one to come back all information, assessment, reset and stronger.”
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