Andrea Stella says that McLaren left himself in a position where it was safer to place his two cars from the series because it pursued the best chance of stealing Max Verstappen’s victory.
The Red Bull driver dominated at Monza, but McLaren was not seriously threatened from behind, so it ran long before she pits for soft tires in the final phase. Such a late stop had Charles Leclerc – who stopped earlier – closed somewhat, and Stella explained why that scenario was allowed to develop before he could draw the second car of Oscar Piastri for the protagonist one of Lando Norris.
“Of course would stop to cover Leclerc, the simple solution would have been for the way the race would have unfolded, but it would have limited the result,” said Stella. “So we wanted to find a way to pursue a bigger result.
“In the case of a red flag it would have been quite strong, with the two McLarens that lead, or even in terms of a security car to a certain point, it would have been strong. And we also wanted to stop late enough to go on soft, because if there had been a late security car, we would have been on Harden on Softs.
“So there were stimuli from the point of view and from a general point of view to stay away.”
With Piastri – third on the right track behind Norris – first brought in, this was the reverse order compared to how teams usually stop drivers, and a slow pit stop for Norris led to a team order to exchange position. Stella says that the situation will be investigated, but that it does not necessarily mean that McLaren would do something else in the future.
“We had first gone with Lando, I think, even despite the [slow] Pitstop, if you do the calculations, with such a powerful under -wall that you have with a new soft, he could have recover quite a bit from the time we lost.
“So for us it was relatively easy to say that the intention was that we would not trade position [by stopping Piastri first]. With regard to the pit stop itself, we will view all the information that we have available and the collection of learning we have for the future.
“I think we should first of all agree on what the word ‘review’ means. Review is the basis of pursuing excellence. For me to assess it does not mean that we have to change. We will potentially assess and we can further coordinate and confirm.”
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