McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella is optimistic that it can fight the Ferraris and Red Bull’s Sergio Perez for a spot on the podium at Formula 1’s Miami Grand Prix.
Despite showing promising pace with its updated MCL38 car in the nascent stages of the weekend, McLaren has trailed Ferrari and Red Bull in the decisive moments.
Lando Norris rued mistakes in the opening sector costing him pole position for the Sprint and those same Soft tyre peculiarities saw him trial the Medium in qualifying.
However, Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri, whose car is fitted with half the upgrades this weekend, had to settle for locking out the third row of the grid for the race.
But Stella remains upbeat that the Woking-based squad can look ahead at challenging the cars ahead to secure a podium rather than fixating on the Mercedes’ behind.
“I think we can fight with Ferrari and hopefully with Perez as well,” Stella said.
“I was a little more optimistic yesterday because the car seemed to be performing very well relative to Ferrari and Red Bull, but we have to say that we seem to have almost been at the same level as yesterday, while Ferrari and Red Bull might have found a bit of performance. So we’ll have to see how this translates into the race tomorrow.”
Norris was made to pay for being out of position on the grid in the Sprint as he was eliminated at Turn 1 when the two Aston Martin drivers touched and went into him.
With Piastri stuck in the turbulent wake behind Daniel Ricciardo and Carlos Sainz, Stella admitted McLaren’s potential in race trim was hard to decipher from the Sprint.
“The Sprint, it’s difficult for us to evaluate because one car was off immediately and the other car was following Carlos, who was following Daniel,” he explained.
“So to be discovered, but I think we are in condition to race [the cars ahead].”
Despite introducing a substantial upgrade package this weekend, Stella has warned that the searing heat in Miami hasn’t been favourable towards its 2024 package.
“It’s Miami. Last year, it was the worst event for us,” Stella added, referencing McLaren’s double Q1 exit last season prior to the upgrades that reversed its fortunes.
“It’s very hot conditions which still are not the preferred ones for the characteristics of our car so we are aware that there are some caveats.
“But we’ll start the race tomorrow to try and finish on the podium.”
While the race is expected to be a standard one-stop affair, Stella suspects that the undercut could be a powerful tool teams look to capitalise on to make up places.
“The undercut is powerful, because even if the degradation is relatively lower than what we had in Japan or China, still when you put new rubber and even if you put new Hard rubber, actually, it’s a first lap tyre so you have an undercut, which I guess will be for instance in 20 seconds of about 20 laps, of about one second,” he highlighted.
“But I would expect this race to be a relatively low degradation and we may see teams extending the first stint because if you start on a certain Medium for instance, I think you can go relatively long so it may be tactical as to when you start.
“The Soft tyre is a good question today in the Sprint there were a couple of cars and they did relatively well.
“So I think this will open up for some cars the usage of the Soft at the same time. It’s not like I start on the Soft because I’m going to have a big advantage of grip in the first lap because like we see the Medium is as fast as the Soft on the first lap. So I think the Medium is a better choice [for the start] I would say.”
