On the streets of Monte Carlo, McLaren displayed another impressive team performance, with Oscar Piastri landing in P2, and Lando Norris narrowly missing the podium in P4, just over a second behind the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz.
With Charles Leclerc securing pole position for the race, Piastri was hot on his heels in P2, just 0.154 seconds off Leclerc’s pace, but ultimately, the order from the top ten in qualifying carried over to the top ten in the grand prix.
At the beginning of the race, the Ferraris and McLarens opted for medium tyres, while the Mercedes drivers and Max Verstappen started on hards.
Following the red flag brought out due to the shunt between Perez, Hulkenberg, and Magnussen, both McLaren’s switched to the hard tyres, and had completed their mandatory tyre swirch for the race.
Despite this initial change, there was discussion of the team pitting Norris for during green flag running if the gap to Russell had opened up. Thanks to Leclerc and Sainz, it did not.
Stella noted that the team “did consider it for the entire race but Ferrari I think, they did a good job of always keeping Lando in the pit window of one of the Mercedes.
“The pit window might have appeared for a single lap, but it would have been still a bit of a risk because as soon as the pit stop had been just one second slower than normal we could have ended up behind a Mercedes.”
The team principal also claimed that it would have been a much more “interesting race with Lando on fresher tyres” whilst acknowledging that a different strategy call likely wouldn’t have improved Norris’s race.
“Based on what I’ve seen today on overtaking I think there was no way that even with the fresh medium we could have passed Carlos.
“So, I don’t think it would have changed the result.”
Piastri’s early contact with Sainz resulted in some damage to his car, but “thanks to the red flag”, the team were in a position to make some quick repairs to the MCL38’s floor.
“We didn’t fix it entirely and we changed the sidepod that was broken as well.
“So overall the deficit was about 10 points [of downforce] for the entire race.
“(This) obviously made us a bit more nervous about the possibility to keep the tyres in a good situation in a good condition because the car was a little damaged, but Oscar managed to do that and ultimately the damage was not influential for the final result.”
Stella spoke about the decision to revert to the original grid positions, given Zhou Guanyu’s lack of progress through Sector 1, claiming that it seemed to benefit Sainz.
“In terms of the way in which the restart order was determined I think what the FIA did was the best thing to do.
“Lucky Carlos, I think he was lucky today and he was also applied a lenient approach from the stewards because the collision in corner one obviously created significant damage to Oscar’s car.
“With yesterday’s impeding, like I say, lucky Carlos, this gained him a podium.
“We are happy for him, but I think especially with yesterday’s impeding we are still a little puzzled.”
Reflecting on the car’s performance, Stella is optimistic about the recent upgrades introduced in Miami, noting that the car is delivering more downforce across all conditions.
“The car, compared to what we expected, seems to be well behaved in low speed slightly more than we anticipated based on our development tools which is good news.
“This is something that we need to understand very accurately so that we have the right information to further develop in this direction.
“It seems to be very profitable for lap time and also seems to make us competitive in circuits which have low speed corners.”
Ultimately, the weekend was a success for the team, with Piastri securing a spot on the podium, and Norris moving into third place in the Drivers’ Championship.
