McLaren will discuss why Oscar Piastri struggled to perform against Lando Norris at the United States Grand Prix as the championship leader saw his lead cut to 14 points.
Norris secured a place on the front row of the grid and showed a race pace similar to that of winner Max Verstappen for a significant part of the race, but was limited to second place after a long battle with Charles Leclerc. Piastri, on the other hand, qualified sixth and finished a distant fifth, with his fastest lap almost a second slower than Norris, and team boss Andrea Stella acknowledges this was not the Australian’s strongest weekend.
“This is certainly one of the most important points to assess, which is the fact that Oscar seemed to have a few tenths in qualifying and in the race that he could not fully realize and that may have been available in the car,” said Stella.
“Basically we are now checking whether we are completely satisfied with the set-up of the car, the layout of the floor, whether everything is as intended from a car point of view.
“At the same time we will look at the handling. I think we know with Oscar that when the conditions are such that we have little grip, you have to really challenge the car, lean on understeer, oversteer, lock… This is an area of his driving that has the opportunity to improve, and by Oscar’s standards that means we will improve quite quickly.
“I think we got quite a bit of information today that adds to the information we got yesterday [pre-race]we had some conversations with Oscar about what we can do to get more out of it. So I think these are just data that we have to learn, and Oscar will learn it soon.”
Stella believes McLaren may have missed some performance by running the car a little too high, as data from the sprint was missing when both drivers crashed.
“It’s about ride heights and about missing references to actually take full advantage of what is allowed,” he said. “And a circuit like COTA, which we know has caught a number of teams in the past, is one where it is very difficult to actually get the last millimeter if you don’t have references that come from real running.
“Simulation can only take you so far, then you need track data to actually go down to the last millimeter.”
#McLaren #review #Piastris #disappointing #COTA #pace #RACER