McLaren team principal Andrea Stella was full of praise for Oscar Piastri following his lights-to-flag victory at the F1 Bahrain GP.
Piastri celebrated his 50th race in F1 with a pole position on Saturday, which he converted into a commanding race win, his second of the season so far.
The Australian had the upper hand over his teammate, Lando Norris, appearing more at ease behind the wheel of the MCL39 throughout the weekend. Piastri bounced back after the disappointment he faced at his home Grand Prix in Melbourne, taking his first win of the season in Shanghai. Now, he has managed to reduce the gap to his championship-leading teammate to just three points.
Piastri delivers “most robust” win yet
Stella was asked to reflect on Piastri’s performance at the F1 Bahrain GP, and how his latest win stacks up against his previous victories.
“Tricky question because right now I would really need to go through what he did previously. If you think of the victory in Baku, for instance, it was a pretty crystalline, clinic victory, that one with Leclerc attacking him every single lap,” Stella said in his print media session.
“For me, this one is the one in which he’s been just, I think, most robust. No hesitations, no inaccuracies. Everything that was available, he capitalised on. So for me, this gives me more the sense of robustness, you know, solid racing.
“I think the Baku one was more on the edge…it was more pressure, this one was more managing gaps, if anything. But obviously, being strong at the start, restarts, it shouldn’t be given for granted for somebody who is at the 50th race in F1, which is quite impressive.”
McLaren not resting on their laurels despite early advantage
While Stella acknowledged that the team exploited the strengths of their car, he disagreed that McLaren were in a “completely different category” to their rivals on Sunday.
“In relation to the fact that we exploited a point of strength of the car, like a gentle interaction with the rear tyres, in fairness, hearing from our competitors, it looked like we have a completely different category, which is not the case,” Stella argued.
“Because as long as we were on the same tyres, Russell was keeping the pressure on. And it’s not like Oscar was managing very much. Oscar was trying to open a gap.
“You know, last year [with Max] Verstappen, if you look at the race trace of last year, it just opened one second a lap, basically. That’s dominance, that’s good interaction with tyres. Our gap is nothing that makes us sleep very quietly, in fairness.”
The McLaren team boss also noted that track conditions in Bahrain played a significant role in how the race played out. Stella stated that in different conditions, or at other tracks, the team’s advantage may not be as pronounced.
“I think if the race was hotter, we could have seen this a little bit more, but at this temperature, it was small margins,” he said.
“I think this factor will not be as important at some other circuits as it was here, because this is one of the highest degradation of the season.
“And I think we saw this in Japan, when as soon as you had the low degradation, basically, we didn’t have any kind of advantage.”
Tyre management gains go beyond downforce, says Stella
Stella revealed that McLaren’s ability to preserve tyres isn’t solely down to the impressive downforce produced by the MCL39.
“I don’t think this is only related to downforce, we made some technical investments in improving the design of the car in relation to the interaction with tyres, so I really want to pay credit to the technical group that worked around this area of car development, because clearly they’ve done a good job,” he commented.
