F1 News
Strong start by Verstappen frustrates McLaren: 'Partly down to the driver'
- Corwin Kunst
Despite Lando Norris winning the race at Zandvoort with relative ease, it was not an entirely flawless day for McLaren. Both papaya-coloured cars had a poor start, causing both Norris and his teammate, Oscar Piastri, to lose a place. Team boss Andrea Stella spoke to GPblog and others after the Dutch Grand Prix about McLaren's poor starts, which have affected them throughout the 2024 season.
It was not the first time Norris had a mediocre start. Every time he started in pole position, he lost first place before turn one. After qualifying at Zandvoort, Helmut Marko already thought that Max Verstappen might be able to take advantage of a potentially mediocre start from the Briton, and his prediction came true.
Stella believes starts are 'fundamental'
Stella thinks that the start is an important issue McLaren must address: "The start is such a fundamental. The element to go racing is as important as car performance. And we do have to look very carefully into the details about why our competitor seems to gain a little bit on us. I think statistically, over the course of the season, we are competitive from a launch point of view, but we see that there are some cars that, like Verstappen for instance, they seem to be performing very well at the start," the Italian explained.
Stella, therefore, stressed, "If you can capitalise on a good qualifying performance with a good start, it makes your life so much easier. So definitely we have to look into this, and as I've already said, this comes from the driver in terms of their launch procedure execution, and it comes from a team point of view because there are some aspects which are under the team's control, and we need to look into what kind of optimisation we are able to do."
McLaren's team boss was unsure of what exactly went wrong, but planned to analyse it after his media duties."I haven't looked yet, and I haven't been reported yet, so I'm not sure exactly today where the performance that we might have missed compared to Verstappen and I think Russell as well."
Stella: 'Piastri had the speed to beat Verstappen'
When pointed out that the poor start did not lead to a worse result, Stella replied, "The end result, it did cost us because I think with Oscar, if we had not lost the position, I think it would be a different race, and Oscar today, he had the pace to beat Max. So it's a significant missed opportunity, I would say. At the same time, we approach this like any other opportunity you have, be it human performance, team performance, or car performance. It's just analysis, review, and then see what factors you have under your control that you have to improve."
As pointed out by Stella, the starts are a 'fundamental' factor a team needs to nail to have a good race. McLaren will be working hard to improve their getaways and will be hoping for a better one in Monza this weekend.
This article was written in collaboration with Toby Nixon
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