Stella pleased with points despite disappointment in Brazil
F1 News
- Nicole Mulder
The Brazilian Grand Prix looked to be a golden opportunity for McLaren to make a big impact in both Formula One championships. Despite the weekend looking promosing with Lando Norris starting the race on pole, disappointment followed as Norris ended the race in sixth while his teammate Oscar Piastri finsihed in eighth. Despite the disappointing weekend, Team Principal Andrea Stella is happy that both drivers finished the race in the difficult conditions at Interlagos.
McLaren team boss Stella happy that drivers finished
For McLaren, the chaotic race in the pouring rain did not go as hoped. The team lost positions due to strategy, as well as two moments where Norris went off track. Stella takes the positive from the disappointing result and stresses that it could have been much worse.
"First of all, I judge it with the fact that the message to both drivers was, ‘Let's finish the race.’ We need to finish the race because in races like this, it's easy to have a problem which actually takes you out of the race and is a DNF and is zero points. Considering what we are fighting for at the moment, this is what we wanted to avoid. I want to praise the fact that both drivers achieved this kind of objective," said the McLaren team boss.
"If I look at Lando himself, the main things to review have to do with this going off track which cost us positions. But like I said before, we did struggle with both drivers," he continued. "I think we, as a team, have to acknowledge that we didn't give the drivers easy material today to handle in these difficult conditions. So I'm sure the drivers will say, ‘I could have done better here and there.’ But also we, as a team, have to acknowledge that our car in these conditions was difficult, tricky and sometimes just unpredictable."
“At the moment we take the positives from a championship points point of view. Definitely we take also several situations in which we could have done better. We'll have to look, for instance, at the start. Did we start as good as we could? Did we have maybe too much wheel spin? Something to be seen, but like always we will review in a very constructive way,” Stella continued.
“While you focus on the opportunities I would also, like I said before, praise the positives of having finished the race. Having finished with good points. We increase our gap to the runner-up in the Constructor Championship,” the Italian concluded on a positive note.
This article was written in collaboration with Nicole Mulder.
Want more Formula 1? Then follow GPblog on our various social media channels too!