Norris eventually finished second after leading comfortably
McLaren F1 boss Andrea Stella says that Lando Norris was unlucky to miss getting into the pits under the safety car in the Canadian GP by just 1.5 seconds.
Stella also admits that the team could have done a better job with keeping its driver informed about what to do.
In what was in effect the reverse of what happened in Miami race leader Norris just missed the pit entry when a safety car was called for after Logan Sargeant crashed.
The cars immediately behind were able to stop and fit fresh inters ahead of an expected rain shower.
When Norris emerged after pitting on the following lap he was down in third, behind Max Verstappen – who lost out in Miami – and George Russell.
After an eventful race Norris did eventually finish ahead of Russell in second, but the missing the chance to pit made his afternoon a lot harder.
“It looks like he was one and a half seconds from the pit, from the line actually where you needed to turn, or go straight,” said Stella.
“In hindsight, we could have told the driver ‘in case of safety car pit’, so he would have just reacted instantly to just pit.
“But we were monitoring the intensity of the rain, and this intensity, in the last few minutes, was kind of reducing, so we didn’t want to pit unnecessarily for a new set of inters when this set of inters could have been good enough in case of a very light rain.
“I think it was much easier for the car behind to do the opposite for instance, as Lando. I think that’s a little bit unlucky, not only with the timing for when the safety car, was deployed, with respect to Lando’s position on track, but also the time of the safety car in the race, because at that time, Lando was by far the fastest car on track.”
Regarding Norris’s strong pace before the safety car, when he opened a lead on Verstappen, Stella said that protecting the intermediate tyres early on had paid dividends.
“We knew that it would have not been easy to make it to the rain, expected around like [lap] 30 initially,” said Stella. “It would have been difficult for these intermediate tyres to survive that long.
“So because we had no pressure, we started to save the tyres very, very early, even when it kind of wasn’t necessary, trying to find cold patches or wet patches to make sure that the tyres stayed in good condition for when the track would have been more challenging.
“So I think there’s no magic. It’s just the position we were in the first stint meant that we could apply this strategy with no loss, because we didn’t have pressure from behind.”
Having lost out at the first safety car McLaren tried to regain the advantage by keeping Norris out as the track dried and cars started to go to slicks, as his pace was still good on his old inters.
He finally came in for slicks a lap after Verstappen and Russell stopped. He emerged just in front of the Red Bull driver, but on the wet line, and thus he couldn’t stay ahead.
Stella believes that without the first safety car Norris could have opened up a gap and then tried to get to the end with a single stop straight to slicks. However he acknowledged that Mercedes had better pace on dry tyres.
“I think Mercedes should have finished ahead of Lando today,” he said. “So if anything, we maximised what was available after the safety car.
“Without the safety car then I think Lando could have accumulated such a large advantage that then we could have tried to make it to the end on the dry tyres, but I think Mercedes, they could have caught up because they were a few tenths of a second faster than us today.
“So we really needed a decent advantage to make it safely to the end. But obviously this is a little bit academic, because in a race like this, two or three safety cars, you have to assume they will happen.
“And also the weather was around. So we knew that it was going to be a race decided by various scenarios. And ultimately, I think we are happy with the results.”
Adam Cooper F1 