McLaren boss Andrea Stella has insisted no blame should be attached to Lando Norris over the pit call that cost him a potential win in Formula 1’s British Grand Prix.
Norris looked on course to achieve an emotional home success when he overtook the two Mercedes cars when his McLaren came alive during a mid-race downpour.
However, McLaren proved to be indecisive on the pit wall once the track dried and Hamilton pitting one tour earlier on Lap 38 enabled him to undercut his compatriot.
Norris was unable to hunt Hamilton down on the Soft compound and the high degradation experienced meant that he fell into Max Verstappen’s clutches on the Hard.
Having missed out during similar mixed conditions in Canada last month, Stella has conceded McLaren was too cautious when managing the latest crossover period.
“I think with Lando the right thing to do was definitely to pit at the same time,” Stella admitted.
“But we wanted to have a very safe transition onto the dry tyres and we lost a bit of time as well at the pit stop.
“We thought that with one lap more we could still keep the lead in fairness.”
Norris’ prospects were hampered as he was stationed for 4.5 seconds in the pit box, but Stella has denied that a smoother stop would have seen him retain the lead.
Instead, Stella has reiterated that McLaren got the pit lap wrong and also the compound choice as a switch to Softs saw Norris relinquish second spot to Verstappen.
“It is enough but this doesn’t guarantee that when going to corner three or four you would still be ahead,” he said regarding the sluggish pit stop.
“So like I say this is another one in which with the benefit of hindsight, if I can do the race again I will pit at the same time as Hamilton and Verstappen.
“Obviously this would leave the question as to which tyres open.
“Pitting one lap later gives you the possibility to observe what your competitors do and I think the going on Soft wasn’t the right call for us.
“We degraded the tyres too much to be able to retain the position on Verstappen and, in fairness, Lewis did a really good job of making the soft tyres last the entire stint.”
Stella has absolved Norris from blame despite the Briton’s criticism over his involvement, citing that McLaren should have had more conviction in its decision-making.
“We wanted to check also with Lando what his preference was, what we should be going after and one aspect was, also do you think it will be tricky?” Stella revealed.
“This we didn’t ask. The sense of asking with Lando, deciding with Lando was will it be tricky going on a C2 compound in these conditions.
“But in fairness, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t that tricky because Verstappen on a Hard compound managed the transition to the dry tyres without big issues.
“So I think this one was a decision that from the people we should have taken once again like in stopping Oscar [Piastri] in the double stack we should have taken the responsibility to say the Medium is just the right tyre, we go for it. I think in checking with Lando we kind of self-doubted and this led us to follow this direction which in hindsight was important.”
Asked whether McLaren would have won the race with the Medium fitted, Stella claimed it was not “guaranteed” but accepts that Norris would’ve had a greater chance.
“It’s not guaranteed because Lewis managed to keep the tyres in good shape so like you know you have to overtake,” he explained.
“I think we could have got in the gearbox of Lewis but overtaking is a slightly different matter.”
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