McLaren: Norris second stint on hard tyre a 'misjudgment'

McLaren hoped that a second stint on the hard tyre in the Belgian Grand Prix would extract Lando Norris from a group of cars in which he was locked, but that strategy proved wrong admitted team boss Andrea Stella.

From seventh on the grid, Norris was unable to hold his own among the top 10, the McLaren driver quickly losing several positions, which encouraged his team to cut short his run on the Softs and switch to the Hards.

But the move – compounded by the McLaren's dismal straight-line speed – dropped Norris from the frying pan into the fire and left the Briton running in the lower tier of the mid-field along with both Alfa Romeo drivers and Haas' Nico Hulkenberg.

"The goal was to get Lando out of the cars around him, give him some free air, and try to go long to then finish on a soft tyre," Stella said, justifying the team's initial strategy.

"But I have to admit that our judgement on the grip of the hard tyres was incorrect. The tyres didn’t have much grip at all and Lando found himself again in the mix of the other cars."

• Read also: Lando 'stuck in a circle' - but somehow still ends up P7!

A sitting duck on the Kemmel straight and battling traffic-induced tyre degradation, Norris' prospects looked bleak.

But a quick switch to the soft compound on lap 17 coupled with favourable circumstances in the race eventually allowed the McLaren charger to progress up the order all the way to P7.

"Luckily, the race gave us the opportunity to rectify the situation," added Stella.

"By going on soft very early, we kind of timed the going on soft with the rain.

"Timing this onto the soft tyres allowed Lando to recover a massive amount of time when anybody else that was out there on used tyres, and they needed to be much more careful."

In hindsight, Stella admitted that McLaren should not have relied on the Hard tyre at all in the race.

"Based on what we know now, definitely we could have worked on, I would say, three things," he noted. "Possibly trying to shed some more drag, even at the cost of some efficiency.

"Then you have information to optimise your ride heights because you need to be conservative once you don’t have any reference.

"And then the third element will be we would know quite a bit more about the tyres, and I think we would stay away from the hard tyres in the race if we could do that again."

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