McLaren’s strong qualifying showing in Formula 1’s Monaco Grand Prix suggests that low-speed cornering is no longer a “clear weakness”, claims boss Andrea Stella.
McLaren continued its recent momentum as both cars qualified inside the top four, with Oscar Piastri securing a front-row spot and Lando Norris splitting the Ferraris.
With both Mercedes and Red Bull having shown impressive pace along with Ferrari at stages during practice, Stella has admitted McLaren’s result arrived unexpected.
“This result in qualifying is slightly above our expectations, having seen our own performance in practice,” Stella said.
“But above all, having seen that there were many teams that seemed to be quite competitive and at times, the lap times that Mercedes, for instance, they were able to do yesterday, if we look at the 11.4 done by Hamilton, above all Mercedes, I would say, Carlos. Leclerc was in his own category all Friday and in P3, Verstappen was also quick.
“So we were not sure and we thought we had a little bit less performance than some of these guys, so the first two rows for us on the grid come as a bit of a surprise.”
Norris assessed coming into the weekend that Monte Carlo’s unique circuit characteristics would not be as penalising to McLaren’s inherent slow-speed weaknesses.
But while Stella concurred with that view, the Italian has contended that the team’s upgrades in Miami improved low-speed performance more than it had anticipated.
“Well, here in Monaco it’s more difficult than in other circuits to reconstruct the speed of our competitors, compare it with our speed and therefore have a precise assessment of where we gain or we lose time, but in general I would say that looking at the sector times, we seem to be behaving all right in low speed,” he explained.
“This is because definitely it looks like the car we took to Miami sort of behaves well in low speed, almost kind of beyond what was our expectation.
“I think we have also understood how to use this car in low speed, which seems to work well, even Miami, like if you think about the track layout, is dominated by low speed and if anything here in Monaco, the sector where we struggled the most was the first sector in which the lowest speed corner is corner one, which is 120 [kph], so it’s a medium to high-speed sector.
“So it looks like the picture of our competitiveness is starting to finally change, where low speed doesn’t appear anymore like a clear weakness.
“Still there’s plenty of opportunities, we are not entirely satisfied for instance with the behaviour on kerbs, on bumps, there’s some more work to do.
“But I think the positive news is that through development we seem like we have been able to alter this picture whereby we were not performing well in low speed.”
But Stella has warned that McLaren must understand the reasons behind the unforeseen gains and thinks the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve will provide a clearer indication.
“I think the performance we are at the moment pulling off in low speed is slightly beyond expectation,” he reiterated.
“Like we didn’t think that we actually had altered so much our car to be this more competitive in low speed.
“So this is a point if anything that we are trying to understand ourselves, and also we’ll have to see like Canada for instance will be another one very interesting, because all corners are low speed, like here in Monaco even if it’s a street circuit, like I said before the speed in the first three corners is pretty considerable.
“So yeah we’ll have to see over a few more races, but definitely it’s an objective of our development to make sure that we don’t compromise some strengths of the car, because we chase some other features, not all the times is possible, but ultimately I guess this is a part of the quality of the development that each team carries out.”
Stella has also denied that the Woking-based squad’s latest upgrade package was tailored towards curing the low-speed shortfall that has existed for several seasons.
“So this aspect of the upgrades possibly working slightly better than expected is kind of across the map, it’s not specific to low speed,” he contended.
“So I wouldn’t say that that’s the main reason, like I said before for us it’s still a bit of an open point as to why the car now seems to be pretty decent in low speed and we don’t want to jump to conclusions too early because it’s pretty fundamental that we derive, that we achieve the most precise answer to this question because it could be a big opportunity for further development, so we need to understand exactly why the car now is competitive in low speed, but the thing you mentioned is not specific to low speed.”
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