McLaren boss Andrea Stella believes Red Bull’s relative lack of pace during qualifying for Formula 1‘s Mexico City Grand Prix was a blip rather than a trend.
The Milton Keynes-based squad arrived at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez off the back of three wins in the last four races.
This also brought Max Verstappen back firmly into title contention, with the four-time F1 champion trailing Oscar Piastri by 40 points coming into the weekend.
That said, Red Bull’s recent dominance was turned on its head during qualifying on Saturday.
Lando Norris assumed pole position for the race on Sunday, leading the Ferrari duo of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton with Verstappen in fifth, five tenths back.
Reflecting on a strong showing for the MCL39, Stella erred on the side of caution before declaring McLaren once again has fielded the fastest car on the grid.
The Italian believes that the circuit’s unique characteristics, coupled with McLaren’s cooling efficiency, have helped it gain a short-lived advantage over Red Bull.
“It’s a circuit in which the quality of your cooling system is important, because if you need to compromise aerodynamics to achieve enough cooling, then the loss of aerodynamic efficiency can be quite rapid,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
“So Mexico is not a place to judge, let’s say, a car, because there could be a cooling implication that can determine performance significantly.”
The lower air density at the track often dictates a shrewd compromise from the teams in terms of how much aerodynamic efficiency they are willing to sacrifice in favour of reliability.
Stella lauded his team for devising a package that essentially renders the problem moot, relatively speaking, for the MCL39.
“Certainly from this point of view, we see the returns of the investment we have done on the 2025 car, on the cooling system itself, the engineering and the technology,” he added.
And while the former Ferrari man is confident that his team can carry forward this momentum into the Grand Prix, the remaining four races after Mexico (including two Sprints in Brazil and Qatar) still mean Verstappen is a realistic threat to Norris and Piastri’s title ambitions.
“Let’s see what Red Bull do [in the race]. I’m sure that even if Red Bull will not be the fastest car, they will be very fast for the remainder of the season,” he asserted.
“So they are in the quest, and we need to focus on ourselves and make sure that we are faster than them.”
READ MORE — Lando Norris leaves F1 title rivals flailing with stunning Mexico GP pole
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