McLaren boss Andrea Stella has explained the thinking behind the team’s decision to wait until the closing stages to pit both drivers in Formula 1‘s Italian Grand Prix.
The Woking-based squad stole the headlines late on at Monza with its contentious call to instruct Oscar Piastri to concede second place to team-mate Lando Norris.
Norris led his team-mate until a slow pitstop on Lap 46 demoted him behind Piastri, who had boxed a lap earlier to ensure he kept track position over Charles Leclerc.
Having seen a vast gap open up to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and with degradation low, McLaren opted to extend the duo’s opening stints on the Medium compound.
Stella has addressed that the side decided against splitting strategies in order to be in a position to capitalise with both drivers had a Safety Car or red flag transpired.
“Obviously stopping to cover Leclerc would have been a simple solution to the way the race would have unfolded, but it would have limited the result,” Stella told media including Motorsport Week.
“So we wanted to find a way today to pursue a bigger result. Like in case of a red flag, that would have been quite strong with the two McLarens leading. And even in terms of a Safety Car, up until a certain point it would have been strong.
“And also we wanted to stop late enough to go on Soft, because had there been a late Safety Car, we would have been on Soft with Verstappen on Hard.
“So there were incentives from a racing point of view and from an overall result point of view at the end of the race to stay out.
“We stayed out up until the point where we needed to sequence the pitstop in a different way compared to the order in which our two drivers were.”
McLaren will review slow Monza pitstop
Stella has insisted that McLaren will initiate a review into the botched stop to minimise the prospect that a repeat occurs to either title hopeful in the remaining races.
“Well, had we gone first with Lando, I think even despite the pitstop, if we do the calculations with such a strong undercut power that you have on a new Soft, he could have recovered quite a bit of the time lost at the pitstop,” the Italian highlighted.
“So I think here we’re going not even in the seconds, we’re going in the tenths of a second.
“So, for us, it was relatively simple to say the intent was that we are not going to swap positions. And that’s why the slow pitstop compounds this intent.
“In terms of the pitstop itself, we will review all the data that we have available and pick up whatever learning we have for the future.”
READ MORE – McLaren explains why the team opted to switch Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in F1 Italian GP
Discussion about this post