McLaren boss Andrea Stella has dampened claims regarding the extent of the team’s advantage in Formula 1 as he insisted the “gap is nothing that makes us sleep quietly”.
The Woking-based squad rebounded from losing out to Max Verstappen in Japan as Oscar Piastri capped a dominant weekend with the team’s maiden race win in Bahrain.
Piastri’s second visit to the top step in 2025 has ensured he and Lando Norris lie 1-2 in the standings, while McLaren harbours a sizeable 58-point lead in the championship.
But while Piastri opened up a 15-second margin over Mercedes’ George Russell in 24 laps, Stella has denied McLaren’s upper hand is vast enough to rest on its laurels.
Indeed, Stella believes that Mercedes opting to run the last stint on the Soft compound compared to Piastri on Mediums distorted the genuine edge that McLaren possesses.
“In relation to the fact that we exploited a point of strength of the car, like a gentle interaction with the rear tyres, in fairness, hearing from our competitors, it looks like we have a completely different category, which is not the case,” Stella told media including Motorsport Week post-race.
“Because as long as we were on the same tyres, Russell was keeping the pressure on and it’s not like Oscar was managing very much. Oscar was trying to open a gap.
“You know, last year [with Max] Verstappen, if you look at the race trace of last year, it just opened one second a lap, basically. That’s dominance, that’s good interaction with tyres. Our gap is nothing that makes us sleep very quietly, in fairness.
“I think if the race was hotter, we could have seen this a little bit more, but at this temperature, it was small margins.”
Where McLaren’s gap could be less pronounced
Stella suspects that McLaren’s advantage will be less pronounced at venues where the conditions aren’t as punishing on the tyres compared to what was existent in Bahrain.
“I think this factor will not be as important at some other circuits as it was here, because this is one of the highest degradation of the season,” the Italian elaborated.
“And I think we saw this in Japan, when as soon as you had the low degradation, basically, we didn’t have any kind of advantage.”
Meanwhile, Stella divulged that McLaren’s strength when it comes to preserving the rubber is not exclusive to the superior downforce the side’s MCL39 car generates.
“I don’t think this is only related to downforce, we made some technical investments in improving the design of the car in relation to the interaction with tyres, so I really want to pay credit to the technical group that worked around this area of car development, because clearly they’ve done a good job,” he added.
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