McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella believes that it was possible a one-stop and with it the Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix victory, could have been achieved with Oscar Piastri at Monza.
Piastri stole a march on his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris on the opening lap of Sunday’s Italian GP, taking the lead at the Variante Della Roggia chicane.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc followed Piastri through to pinch second from Norris and would plump for a one-stop strategy to gain track position and the lead during the closing phase of the race.
The two-stopping Piastri felt that his team’s strategy was “the right move” as he was unsure his tyres would have lastest the distance otherwise, but Stella pondered whether McLaren could have followed Leclerc’s example.
“In hindsight, especially with Oscar, after the stop if we had driven the car to say, we drive for a one stop, even if we see the graining on the hard tyre, we don’t get too worried, and we just simply try to respond to Leclerc, then I think the victory could have been possible,” Stella explained.
“The thing is you go into some of the valuations in terms of how much we lose the front tyres from car to car and I think our car, traditionally, tends to be very good on the rear tyres.
“But when we deal with front graining we tend to be on the aggressive side. So this made us a bit nervous, especially after Lando had a lockup on the front left a couple of laps before, which for us normally would have been the symptom that tyres were starting to struggle.
“But in hindsight I think there wasn’t enough degradation for Leclerc to actually, for us, go and beat him on a two stop as we missed by a couple of laps – but a couple of laps is a lot.
“So it remains a question mark, whether we could have won the race or not. But it looks like there was potentially more in the tyres than what we might have anticipated.
“Obviously everybody entered the race with doubts as to the tyres because nobody runs the hard tyres and when you are pitting it is easier to say let me try the one stop than when you have the lead, and if it doesn’t work it is going to be a misery at the end of the race.”
With McLaren locking out the front row with Norris on pole and Piastri second, all signs were pointing toward a second successive McLaren GP win in as many weeks.
With Norris claiming the team had the fastest car on average following his dominant Zandvoort victory, perhaps Sunday at Monza was a missed opportunity.
However, Stella argued that McLaren wasn’t the dominant car in Italy that many thought it was and said Ferrari was on a par throughout the weekend.
“In terms of the race today, I think there maybe a misunderstanding that the McLaren was by far the fastest car,” Stella said.
“I think Leclerc was as fast as McLaren today because he could stay with Oscar in the first stint and normally when you have the dirty air and you can stay with the race leader you are at least as fast as the race leader.
“This normally leads to some degradation, like Leclerc had in the final bit of the first stint. And even in the second stint he was behind two McLarens and still he could stay with the McLarens.
“Even if you look at the practice and the qualifying I think lap times were essentially within the noise of putting together laps.
“So I think Ferrari this weekend they were as competitive as us, at least with Leclerc, which for us is somehow bad news because it meant we couldn’t simply cruise in the race and we needed to deal with them and they did a good job at exploiting some of their strengths.
“But at the same time it’s good news because we have more cars that can take points away off Red Bull.
“So actually I think this is better news for us and we need to make sure we maximise the potential that is available in the car, even if it means that at these kind of circuits Ferrari will set a very serious challenge for the victory.”
