SUZUKA, Japan — McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has defended his team’s strategy calls at the Japanese Grand Prix, including the decision not to swap its drivers at the end of the race.
Verstappen won from pole position at Suzuka after soaking up 53 laps of pressure from Lando Norris in second place and Oscar Piastri in third.
In the final ten laps of the race, Piastri radioed the team to say he had more performance to unleash to attack Verstappen if Norris moved out of his way.
Similar situations in the past have seen teams swap their drivers under the condition that the unleashed driver gives the position back if it is unable to pass the rival car.
But ultimately McLaren opted against swapping its drivers as it felt Piastri was not better placed than Norris to attack.
“I don’t think it is so clear that Oscar was faster,” Stella said. “I think Lando was trying to get in Max’s slipstream or even closer, but any time you went below one second [of the car in front], then there was a significant loss of grip.
“So then Lando was doing a little bit of an ‘elastic’ today, trying to cool down a bit his tyres, going again. I don’t think it is a situation that we should judge at face value in terms of what the pace of the car was.
“Lando was trying to get close to Verstappen with maximum momentum, but it was difficult. It was something we knew right from the start that on this track you need 0.7-0.8 seconds of performance advantage in order to be able to overtake.”
Another option McLaren did not explore was to pit Norris before Verstappen to try to make use of the performance of fresher tyres to “undercut” the Red Bull.
Piastri pitted on Lap 20 to fend off a similar undercut from George Russell, who was running in fifth place, before Norris and Verstappen both pitted on Lap 21.
When Stella was asked why McLaren gave the benefit of an early pit stop to Piastri over Norris, he said it was to protect the team’s overall result and because an early pit stop would have left Norris vulnerable to losing positions in the event of a safety car.
“I think pitting Lando would have meant that we could not have pitted Oscar and this would have been a problem for Oscar,” Stella said.
“Oscar would have waited [another lap], which I think would have been a problem with the cars, especially Russell, that pitted and that we needed to cover.
“We will review the gaps [between the drivers at the time of the pit stops] to understand whether there was a possibility to go for an undercut with Lando that could actually be executed on Max.
“But we shouldn’t forget, though, that by giving up track position you also expose the car that you pit to safety car risk, for instance. Like Lando would have lost positions in a safety car should a safety car be deployed.
“In hindsight, you don’t see any safety car, you don’t see anything, and you think, ‘oh yeah, I might have gone for the undercut’, but an undercut attempt comes with some risks.
“It was apparent that the degradation was low, so I think if you lose position with a safety car, it’s lost. I don’t think we could have overtaken a Ferrari or a Mercedes today.”
After Norris missed out on pole position by 0.012 seconds on Saturday and Piastri by 0.44 seconds, Stella said the core reason for the result could be traced to incredibly small margins in qualifying.
“I’m sure our two drivers will have commented themselves that their qualifying laps were not the best laps in qualifying in their careers. Clearly, when Max elevates the game so much, you need to nail laps in qualifying and you need to bring home any possible millisecond.
“Yesterday, it was indeed a matter of milliseconds, with 0.043-0.045 seconds between P3 and P1. Ultimately, I think the qualifying laps yesterday in Q3 were even more of a determinant factor than anything that happened today in the race.”
