McLaren team principal Andrea Stella was pleased with the result obtained in last Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix.
After struggling for speed in the dry, the intermediate stint from both Norris and Piastri was extremely impressive. The Brit gained over 20s Sainz during the last 10 laps as he was the fastest car on track. Piastri also showed strong speed as they finished P9 and P10.
Stella was happy with the pace and skills shown by his two drivers.
“I think they were conditions in which driver ability makes quite a bit of a difference,” he stated.
“Because I think it’s those conditions in which the more you can push on the tyre, the more the tyres reward you, because you generate temperatures. So it’s this kind of positive spiral against if you don’t push and hesitate, you don’t generate temperature, you have a negative spiral.
“So I would like to remark that Lando drove extremely well on the intermediate tyres but also Oscar, after he kind of found his speed, considering it was his second time ever on intermediate tyres and he was in Monaco, actually was on a good pace as well. So well done to our drivers, and shame the race wasn’t for a longer period on intermediate tyres. It could have been more rewarding for us.”
“Anyhow, we are happy with the racing today, it’s good that we made progress in the race. We know that realistically for us, scoring points with two cars is a good result and we take it.”
The uncertainty if and when the rain would come prompted McLaren to pit Lando Norris for a new set of hards, right before the heavy rain came. But that had everything to do with the surroundings of the principality.
“Before the rain started we pitted Lando onto the hard tyres. I’ll explain the situation: here in Monaco the topology – the configuration of the mountains – makes the difference when the rain comes from that direction. We’d already had rain behind the mountains for a couple of hours if not longer. The question was whether it would come over the mountains or not, and it did. We were relatively certain that at some stage some rain would come.”
He added: “Unfortunately the forecast we had was that it would be Class Zero to Class One, which is light rain. That’s also why we didn’t want to leave Lando out on finished dry tyres because in that situation, when it gets a little damp, the dry tyre switches off and becomes like plastic. So we thought we would put him on new hard tyres, because the hard here is relatively soft, and then we would get through this period.”
Unfortunately the rain then came soon after the stop for Norris, and it was quite heavy as well, prompting another pitstop to put the young Briton on intermediates.
“But then the rain after one or two laps became very heavy in a couple of places and clearly we needed to go on the inters.
“I think in these situations it’s very difficult because of this element of the topography here. The wind direction and even the radar isn’t very useful in terms of telling you the level of intensity. Nor is it very useful in terms of understanding the front. It’s a Monaco specific situation,” Stella explains.
“In hindsight you could say with Lando we should have stayed out, but how might we have gone through those couple of laps with the finished dry tyres when there was a lot of water in quite a few corners? We could be sitting here discussing why he crashed. It’s very tricky, it’s very marginal.”
In the end it all turned out right though, when both Norris and Piastri brought home some much needed points for the Woking outfit, although Stella didn’t really know how to rate the significance of this result as McLaren seem to be the sixth fastest team at best in the dry right now.
“You can look at it in two ways. One is that Alpine has joined the list of cars that are clearly quicker than us, and we need a bit of an eventful situation – such as today with Perez and Stroll – to get in the points.”
“At the same time we’re pleased with the execution of the race, with the fact that we stayed out of trouble. Everyone, drivers included, executed the race very positively. We’re very happy with Oscar managing this kind of situation so effectively. So we take away very important positives.”
For the fans of the papaya-clad team there is the prospect of an updated package coming in Silverstone, with another upgrade coming later in the season.
“Looking forward, the plan is we need to get the car more competitive. We’ve now released the package which should be available between Austria and Britain, and this is what should take the car to a more competitive level – and will be the foundation for future developments next year. For the second part of the season there should be another major upgrade.”
