McLaren team principal Andrea Stella believes the MCL60 was the “second best car” on race day at the Mexico City GP, a stark contrast with qualifying which saw the Papaya cars over half-a-second off pole position in a track that features many slow speed corners, which has been their weakness for most of the 2023 season.
Photo Credits: McLaren Racing
The Woking squad endured a difficult qualifying session, which saw Lando Norris knocked out in Q1 after being caught by the yellow flags for Fernando Alonso’s spin, and Oscar Piastri only managing to secure seventh on the grid, over half-a-second back from Charles Leclerc’s pole time.
But the race proved to be quite a different story, with Norris carving his way through the field in a sensational drive to get fifth place after starting down in 17th. His team-mate Oscar Piastri endured a tougher day after contact with Yuki Tsunoda meant the Australian carried damage in his McLaren for a large portion of the race, but still managed to finish in a respectable eighth place.
Speaking to selected media after the race, team principal Andrea Stella said the team had the “second best car” on race day the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, and lamented how the timing of the red flag meant they couldn’t quite exploit the full benefit from their two-stop strategy with Norris:
“Well today I think we were, in fairness, we were in position to be the second best car,” he said.
“Possibly shared with [Lewis] Hamilton, but even the stint Lando [Norris] does, when he goes on hard because we wanted to elect a strategy that would give us as much free air as possible.
“So, after 10 laps on soft we went on the hard, that pace was also very strong and it was a controlled pace because we wanted to go very, very long.
“And then [we would have had] a final stint on medium or even soft depending on how long we would have gone with the [hards], and that one was also encouraging, so potentially second best.”
The Italian explained how the team made a split-second decision to bring Norris in for new medium tyres when the Safety Car was deployed and why it looked “perfect” at that point, before the red flag meant they effectively lost two places to Nico Hulkenberg and Yuki Tsunoda, which made the Briton’s life more difficult at the restart – without which he believes would have made for an “interesting” final stint with others possibly going to the end on used hard tyres:
“We came in with the safety car, which would have put us in a very strong position with a brand new set of medium for the final part of the race. So we were like, ‘wow, it’s perfect.’
“In hindsight looking at the accident,” he continued. “When the safety car came out, Lando was still at the start of second sector, so we discussed in the second sector.
“But then it was close to pit entry and a call needed to be made. And at the time we had just seen the fire like, ‘you know, like if it’s a safety car, we are in a very strong position.’
“So we called him in and we lost the positions, and then red flag. With Lando starting a little far ahead, it could have been even more interesting.
“Others were on used hards. I would have to check if others would have changed tires or not ahead of us, but had the situation not changed [and] people didn’t pit, it could have been interesting.”
And whilst he was satisfied with the strong pace shown in the race, Stella said McLaren will need to do a thorough analysis of why its car is performing so wildly different in the race compared to qualifying, in what he compared to a “jigsaw” for the Woking squad to get their heads around:
“I think what I saw in qualifying to me was a fair reflection of the car with one of the best potential in the low speed that is Ferrari. Pole position in Singapore, pole position in Austin with the bumps, pole position in Monza – where they were outstanding in the first two chicanes – clearly they have this characteristic.
“I wouldn’t have expected to be half-a-second behind, and I wasn’t expecting [us] to be so competitive [in the race],” he admitted. “I think there’s a bit of analysis to do, it’s not a straightforward interpretation, let’s say.
“[In the race] we were quick, [in qualifying] we were not that quick. This is is not a clear pattern. It’s a pattern that we left to put together like a bit of a jigsaw.
“Because the other element that is quite peculiar here in Mexico is that in low speed you can use ride heights that normally you can’t use in any other circuit, just because you can set up the car quite low. So in a way we sort of mitigate some of our sensitivities.
“Actually, what happened [in qualifying] is we started to suffer in high speed – the car became nervous, Lando lost the car in high speed. So we need to analyse this pattern because it’s not a straightforward interpretation.”
