McLaren
Lando Norris, 9th
"Ultimately, today boiled down to a few key issues. The initial gamble to start on the medium tyres didn't work out; the grip just wasn't there as we had anticipated, it was a collective decision, and in hindsight, it was the wrong one. However, we also simply weren't quick enough, and we have to be honest about that. The car is lacking pace, and we need to improve it significantly if we want to be competitive. I don't think we could fight for more than P6 and P7 today, regardless of how we executed the race.
"The incident behind the Safety Car was my mistake. The pack ahead checked up much more suddenly because of the situation with George, and I just got caught out. It was a very unusual and unlucky situation, but at the end of the day, it's my responsibility to manage that. I know I could have done better today, just as the team knows we have work to do in making the car quicker. We will learn from today and turn our focus to preparing for Singapore."
Oscar Piastri, 6th
“P6. It was a very mixed and chaotic race today. We took a gamble at the start with the slick tyres, and then immediately boxed for Inters, but the change was the right call, and the Safety Car timing allowed us to minimise the effect of it. We improved a lot on the Hard tyres, especially in the second stint where we were catching Leclerc, which the final Safety Car cut short. However, we just didn’t have the pace we needed today to make a lasting impact.
“We know the work we have to do and that we need to keep pushing and bringing further developments to the car to close that gap - we can see the progress our rivals are making, which was clear from Red Bull’s performance this weekend. Our new parts are performing as expected, but everyone else is also improving, so we are not currently in the fight for wins. We’ll review it all and then focus on Singapore.”
Andrea Stella, Team Principal
“It was a race packed with incidents, just as we’d expected. Setting aside any assessment of the decisions made at crucial moments – the tyres at the start, the timing of the pit stops – the reality is that this weekend our car package was fourth in terms of performance. Even if we’d got every decision spot on, I don’t think we could have achieved any higher than Oscar’s sixth place. Of course, we could have picked up a few more points with Lando had it not been for his excursion onto the run-off area at the second restart, but in terms of assessing our overall performance, it wouldn’t have made a difference.
“We need to analyse the results of the last two races carefully and work out how to get our performance back to the level we saw around the summer break, when we secured two wins and three Pole positions. Certainly, some of our direct rivals have taken a significant step forward – such as Red Bull – and now it’s up to us to respond so that we can get back into the fight for podium places and try to improve our position in both championships.”
