McLaren chief Andrea Stella has hailed the team’s engineers for the work they’ve done mastering Formula 1’s “black art” of tyre management.
The McLaren MCL39 hasn’t been unbeatable over a single lap so far in 2025, but it boasts by far the best race pace of any car in the field.
That’s due to its incredible feat of managing tyre degradation, which was used to devastating effect in the hot Miami Grand Prix temperatures.
A McLaren one-two at the Miami International Autodrome on Sunday, led by Oscar Piastri saw the papaya team clear the rest of the field by half a minute.
This led to Stella, usually coy on the team’s performance relative to the competition, to heap praise on the McLaren team for a job very well done.
“I think we have seen before, we have talked about this a few times now, that whenever the conditions are challenging for the tyres in terms of overheating in particular, then the car seems to be doing a good job on keeping the tyres in a very good window and the car is gentle on the tyres,” he told select media including Motorsport Week.
“There’s very good engineering behind this, we have looked holistically at all the characteristics that you can have in a car that influence the behaviour of the tyres and I just want to take the opportunity to praise the work that has been done by the engineers at McLaren in terms of identifying these factors, designing these factors in a way that is practical to actually cash in this kind of benefit and then master one of the matters that still in F1 looks like it’s a little bit of a black art, which is dealing with tyres.”
Stella also praised the McLaren team for producing a car that can keep itself cool in hotter climates.
“So, very proud of the team, very proud of our drivers that have been part of this process and I would say especially when it’s hot, there’s another characteristic which I think works very well with our car, which is the cooling system,” he added.
“I think when it’s hot, our car, you can see that it’s relatively closed from a bodywork point of view because there’s been also great engineering gone into the cooling system, car layout.
“So, I think in these conditions we see that the excellence of the engineering at McLaren has reached a point where it can make the difference to this kind of extent.”
Managing tyre degradation in dirty air
Another impressive feat McLaren demonstrated was both drivers following Max Verstappen closely for several laps without suffering in the dirty air.
Piastri, in particular, was able to stalk Verstappen for the first 14 laps of the Miami GP before making his move to the front and had no trouble keeping the pace up to canter off into the distance.
Stella debated whether this was purely a feat of McLaren engineering, or contextualised by the Miami circuit characteristics.
“I think realistically the tyres will have suffered by following Max so closely,” he began.
“I don’t know to what extent. But at the same time, I think once you get the benefit of free air leading the race, you get quite a bit of benefit.
“So, we don’t know exactly how much in what we saw after overtaken Max.
“There was a bit of a penalty because of having stayed behind Max, but then the benefit of leading the race in terms of tyre exploitation.
“So, I’m not sure from a technical point of view how these two factors combined to each other, but clearly, I think after a few laps in the race, Oscar could benefit by quite a bit of an advantage compared to Max, and therefore it was relatively easy to stay with him.”
Stella argued that a performance delta was on display at Miami, making it easier for Piastri to pass the Red Bull.
“Let’s say it was not one of those cases in which you need to use your tyres to the limit to be able to stay there and gain the DRS,” he explained.
“It was relatively easy to gain the DRS, and at this track the DRS sections are so long that then you have a benefit from an overtaking point of view.
“I think, you know, we went from a track… Even Saudi is relatively easy to overtake, but here overtaking is 30-40% easier when you take the lap time delta required to overtake another car.
“So, you definitely have to lean less on the tyres to be able to complete the overtaking,” he concluded.”
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