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McLaren's strategy was the wrong one according to Stella
- Renate van Holst
Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris finished second and third respectively at the Monza Grand Prix. But the drivers are not happy about that, as the possibility of winning was in the cards. Andrea Stella, McLaren's team principal, is also at a loss as to what would have happened if the McLaren's had stopped just once.
Was a win in the cards for McLaren?
The McLarens started the race well, with Piastri quickly taking the lead from his teammate Lando Norris. Unfortunately, the British team's strategy fell apart when Charles Leclerc chose to make only one pit stop, while the McLarens both made two pit stop instead.
"I think in hindsight, especially with Oscar, after the stop, if we had driven the car to say, like we drive for a one-stop, even if we see the graining on the hard tyres, we don’t get too worried, and we just simply try and respond to Leclerc, then I think the victory could have been possible," Stella told GPblog among others following the race.
"The thing is, you go into some of the variations in terms of how much you use the front tyres from car to car, and I think our car, traditionally, tends to be very good on the rear tyres. But when we deal with front graining, we tend to be on the aggressive side." That made McLaren a bit nervous, the Italian added.
"I think there wasn’t enough degradation for Leclerc to actually, for us, go and beat him on a two-stop, because we missed a couple of laps, but a couple of laps is a lot. So it remains a question mark whether we could have won the race or not. But it looks like there was potentially more in the tyres than what we might have anticipated," the team principal concluded.
This article was written in collaboration with Kada Sarkozi
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17 September 2024
