Norris just missed out in Spain – but his strategy was not impacted by his start
McLaren boss Andrea Stella says that the team was “surprised” by how early rivals pitted in the Spanish GP, and he insists that Lando Norris’s strategy was not affected by his bad first lap dropping him from pole to third.
Norris was stuck behind George Russell in the opening stint, and despite the Mercedes driver pitting on lap 15 and leader Max Verstappen coming in on lap 17 Norris stayed out until lap 23, giving himself a six-lap tyre offset on the Dutchman.
At the second stops Norris pitted three laps later than Verstappen, but despite a charging final stint on his younger soft tyres Norris came up just short in second place.
Stella says that the pit stop timing would have been similar even if Norris hadn’t been stuck behind Russell in the early stages.
“I think we would have done exactly the same strategy, even leading, because we are in Barcelona,” he said.
“In Monaco, we would have done a different strategy. We were very surprised when we saw people go in lap 16-17, for me, that’s a bit of self-inflicted pain at this circuit, because the degradation is so high, overtaking is easy.
“So actually we thought this is going to bring us back in the race, and we went for our race. We just lost a little bit too long behind Russell at the start. Otherwise the race would have come to us at the end of the 66 laps.
“I would like to praise the good work of our strategists, because somehow this is what we had in mind, and it sort of unfolded the way we thought it would.
“Should people just feel the pressure to go and pit? Obviously, sometimes the pressure to go and pit depends on how you use your tyres, and sometimes you just have to beat, if that makes sense. But here it can be very costly if you start pitting too early.”
Stella admitted that setbacks such as Norris getting caught behind Russell and a slightly long second stop can be very costly given the competitiveness of the field.
“It’s the second time that the gaps in qualifying are under 20 milliseconds,” he said.
“Everything is getting extremely tight, which means that the details, they do become very important, because you have no margin in which you can compensate any little imprecision.
“I would say that, as for today, the main factor is that we couldn’t defend the first position in Barcelona.
“This is not necessarily a surprise, because you have such a long run to corner one, the cars run high downforce, so as soon as you gain a bit of slipstream, it makes you so much faster than the car ahead, which meant that Lando was not in condition to defend his pole position.
“And I actually appreciated this wise approach, whereby stay out of trouble, the race we know is going to come to us. Just the time lost behind Russell, it was too much.
“So I would say that a couple of positions lost at corner one, and the time lost behind Russell, they are the two decisive factors. The pit stop probably another one second.
“But in fairness, even the one second, if we were in behind Verstappen at the start, I think we could have played our cards with good chances.”
Stella said that McLaren and Red Bull were well matched on overall performance.
“I think the race pace was very, very similar, very, very similar,” he said. “I think the fact that we were faster at the end is because we had fresher tyres. The fact that he was faster at the start is because we were behind Russell.
“It would almost look like the great balance of performance that we had in qualifying, parity of performance, almost transferred into the race, where normally you have some variations as a function of how you interact with the tyres.
“But actually today, I think it was very similar, which, once again, on a track that is so demanding on tyres, so demanding on aerodynamics, I think that’s really good news for the progress that we have made with the performance of the car.”
After the race a clearly frustrated Norris said he should have won, and blamed himself for the start.
“The fact that Lando is self-critical is a style, and sometimes we react very much on the style rather than on the content of things,” he said.
“I think actually, Lando’s start wasn’t very bad at all. It was decent start, like he is almost one car ahead of Max.
“The fact is that Russell got the double slipstream of Lando and Max, and in corner one, I think Lando was just very wise, because it’s a second and your race is gone, and that’s not the way we want to race. We want to stay in the race.
“So I think from an opportunity point of view, as was said before, it’s more of a detail. Okay, you can do an even better start. You could have been one metre ahead, but it’s very, very marginal. And the fact that Lando might have been harsh on himself in terms of the responsibility for that, I think, is just a style aspect.
“Some of the drivers would have complained. ‘Oh, Barcelona, the straight is too long.’ Actually, I like that people look at their own opportunities before thinking that the world plays against you. I mean, that’s the way you actually work on the variables that you can control.
“We don’t overreact to the style of Lando being tough with himself. Certainly I’m sure this is something that he will keep fine tuning over the years. But from Lando’s point of view, I think he just drove very well the entire weekend.
“And if he is upset for a P2, finishing two seconds from Max, then this is really good news for everyone, including F1, because it means that we have races, and it means that with little details like defending your pole position, we finally can have some different winners than Max.”
Adam Cooper F1 