No panic for McLaren as silver lining of costly United States GP discovered

Despite the United States GP weekend being costly for the McLaren drivers, team boss Andrea Stella left Texas feeling “reassured” about several factors.

Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris had their respective leads over Max Verstappen further chipped away in the Drivers’ Championship, as the Red Bull man controlled proceedings to win the United States Grand Prix.

Andrea Stella: Lando Norris had the pace to win

After victory in the Sprint race, a feat made easier by a racing incident eliminating both McLarens, Verstappen converted his pole position for the Grand Prix into victory.

Covering off Norris into Turn 1, Verstappen’s lead was made easier by Charles Leclerc exploiting his soft tyres to get ahead of Norris and engage in a race-long battle that was only decided in Norris’ favour in the closing stages.

But, while in clear air, Norris showed similar pace to Verstappen and, had he not had his race compromised by Leclerc’s presence, the indications were that a tremendous scrap between the pair for the race victory could have unfolded.

Verstappen’s win is his third in the last five races, alongside two-second places, meaning he has scored 119 points out of a maximum 133 – just 14 points left on the table as the Dutch driver’s resurgence has applied plenty of pressure on the leading McLaren drivers.

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It’s in Norris’ pace that McLaren team boss Andrea Stella wasn’t panicking about the fact Verstappen reduced his overall points deficit to Oscar Piastri down to 40 points, and to Norris down to 26 points, as the leading trio are converging in the final quarter of the championship.

“In terms of the trend, today was a relatively reassuring race,” Stella told the accredited media, including PlanetF1.com, after the United States GP.

“Because I think, without having to fight with Charles, which was certainly an entertaining fight itself, I think Lando had the pace to win the race today.

“Obviously, he needed to gain the position on track, which is never easy with Max and with the one-stop strategy, not necessarily we would have had many opportunities from a strategic point of view, but, performance-wise, I think we are reassured that the pace was sufficient to fight for the victory.”

The failure to participate in the Sprint race on Saturday played a big part in McLaren playing catch-up, Stella explained, with this explanation backed up by Red Bull and Ferrari each improving its performance noticeably between the Sprint and the Grand Prix.

“I think not having done the Sprint race left us a little bit on the back foot from a setup point of view,” he said.

“And in hindsight, we can see already that there was more performance that we could have extracted from the car.”

Given that Red Bull’s upswing in performance has coincided with the rollout of minor tweaks and upgrades to the RB21 across the last half-dozen races, Stella ruled out any chance that McLaren could switch back onto its MCL39 for a last-gasp upgrade or two to help massage the title home.

“When it comes to new upgrades, new parts, then this will not happen for the rest of the season,” he confirmed, when asked if anything might be created in a bid to stem the tide against Verstappen.

Part of where McLaren could have found more performance was related to ride height, risking more plank wear, Stella said.

COTA’s bumpy surface means that teams can be caught out with excessive plank wear, meaning disqualification from the results, and Stella firmly said there had been some clearance left on the table as a result of needing to take a more conservative approach.

“It’s about ride heights and it’s about missing references to actually exploit fully what is allowed,” he said.

“At a track like COTA, which we know has caught out some teams in the past, it’s one of those in which is very difficult to actually nail the last millimetre if you don’t have references coming from real running.

“Simulation can take you only to a certain point, then you need track data to actually go to the last millimetre.”

The consequence of the end result of the weekend means the pressure is mounting up on McLaren’s two drivers with five race weekends to go.

For Stella, it’s a situation he’s been in before, through his stints in performance and race engineering positions for drivers such as Michael Schumacher, Kimi Raikkonen, and Fernando Alonso.

This experience helps with keeping the situation calm, Stella explained, which he’s able to use in order to pass on his wisdom to the less experienced members of the McLaren squad.

“I need to keep myself calm, first of all, which is thanks to experience, and also by putting things in good perspective,” he said.

“I hope that I will be able to do so.

“We keep talking about the fact that what we are facing in this moment, which is a tight competition to win races, a tight competition in the quest for the Drivers’ Championship, is what Formula 1 is about.

“If anything, it was anomalous when we were doing easily, P1 and P2 like in Barcelona, in Bahrain, and some other places. That’s not what Formula 1 is about.

“So it’s a process of getting used with this kind of pressure, which we want to live with maximum intensity and minimum stress.

“We don’t want to lose the joy of doing what we do. We just want to make sure that we put ourselves in the state in which we perform at our best, which also includes having fun and recognising that, ultimately, it’s quite a big privilege to be in this situation.

“It’s a privilege that came thanks to the good work that McLaren, the team, the two drivers, have been able to do.

“So what we do in the future is very easy. We keep doing the good work, and the results will take care of themselves.”

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