Stella warns Verstappen and Red Bull: 'Norris had damage that point'
F1 News
Lando Norris nearly led every lap at the 2025 Australian Grand Prix, and manage to bring home the MCL39 in first place this Sunday. McLaren at one point had quite a huge gap, but Max Verstappen was right behind the Briton once they crossed the finish line. Andrea Stella explained how Norris and Verstappen's performance compared.
Throughout the race, Verstappen once trailed the McLaren cars by approximately 16 seconds. However, Verstappen was still right up on Norris' gearbox by the end. "It's Verstappen and Red Bull. They know how to make quick cars, they know how to race fast and they know how to race well in this kind of tricky and changeable conditions. So not a surprise that Verstappen was so close to us and he was in contention for the victory until the last metre of the race."
Where did Verstappen lose the Australia GP versus Norris?
According to the McLaren team principal, the McLarens managed to keep the tyres alive for more time than the defending world champion did. "I think probably in the early stages of the race, in order to try and stay with Lando, he might have used his tires a little too hard and that's why he then lost some of the pace and during the first stint we could open a gap that was equivalent to a pit stop."
Therefore, he does not want to draw conclusions about the gap just yet. "I think every driver that races for victories tries and give it a go and see what happens with the tyres. So overall not a surprise but like I said before we will have to see a few more races to actually see what is the real competitiveness situation."
However, he also added that Norris did damage his car throughout the Grand Prix, but the team are yet to know what caused that or how much performance did leave the car. "One issue we had in the final laps of the race with Lando is that he had the floor pretty badly damaged. He lost aerodynamic performance and this meant that he couldn't utilise the full pace of the car. So I think the situation got more tense than would have normally been the case because of this damage on Lando's car. I think how strong the car was we could see actually with Oscar that in the space of a few laps he recovered three, four positions. I think in normal circumstances it shouldn't have been that difficult for Lando," Stella concluded.
This article was written in collaboration with Sandy van Wijngaarden
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