McLaren owns up to British GP strategy miscues, absolves Norris

McLaren team boss Andrea Stella says a lack of conviction led to a strategy misstep that deprived Lando Norris of a strong opportunity to win Sunday’s British Grand Prix.

Norris' dream of a home victory at Silverstone was shattered by several the timing of the Briton’s final pitstop in the 52-lap race and the choice of tyre compound.

Norris looked poised for glory after overtaking both Mercedes cars during a mid-race downpour and leading proceedings for 19 laps.

But while Hamilton and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen opted to switch back to slicks on lap 38 amid a drying circuit, Norris stayed out a lap longer than his two rivals which allowed the Mercedes driver to achieve an undercut that would ultimately ensure the seven-time world champion’s win.

While Norris and Hamilton both switched to soft tyres, Verstappen gambled on the hard compound which proved the better choice.

Norris was not only unable to catch Hamilton in the closing stages of the race, he was also overhauled by Verstappen with four laps to go leaving him trailing the Red Bull to the finish line in third place.

• Read also: Norris says McLaren ‘threw it away in the final stop’

“I think with Lando the right thing to do was definitely to pit at the same time,” Stella explained after the race, quoted by Motorsport Week.

“But we wanted to have a very safe transition onto the dry tyres and we lost a bit of time as well at the pit stop.

“We thought that with one lap more we could still keep the lead in fairness.”

Adding to Norris’ frustrations was his tardy 4.5-second pitstop, partly due to overshooting his pit box.

Stella downplayed the impact of the below-par execution, admitting that both the pit window and tyre choice were wrong. He conceded that switching to Softs allowed Verstappen to overtake Norris on the more durable Hard tyres.

“It is enough but this doesn’t guarantee that when going to corner three or four you would still be ahead,” added the Italian.

“So like I say this is another one in which with the benefit of hindsight, if I can do the race again I will pit at the same time as Hamilton and Verstappen.

“Obviously this would leave the question as to which tyres open. Pitting one lap later gives you the possibility to observe what your competitors do and I think the going on Soft wasn’t the right call for us.

“We degraded the tyres too much to be able to retain the position on Verstappen and, in fairness, Lewis did a really good job of making the soft tyres last the entire stint.”

After the race, in typical Norris fashion, the Briton blamed himself for “not making some of the right decisions”, especially regarding his choice of Softs for his final pit stop.

But Stella absolved his driver of any wrongdoing and shouldered the blame, insisting McLaren should have made a more decisive call regarding its choice of compound for Norris’ final stint.

“We wanted to check also with Lando what his preference was, what we should be going after and one aspect was, also do you think it will be tricky?” he said.

“This we didn’t ask. The sense of asking with Lando, deciding with Lando, was will it be tricky going on a C2 compound in these conditions.

“But in fairness, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t that tricky because Verstappen on a Hard compound managed the transition to the dry tyres without big issues.

“So I think this one was a decision that from the people we should have taken once again like in stopping Oscar [Piastri] in the double stack we should have taken the responsibility to say the Medium is just the right tyre, we go for it.

“I think in checking with Lando we kind of self-doubted and this led us to follow this direction which in hindsight was important.”

While a win with the Medium tyres wouldn't have been guaranteed, Stella believes it would have at least given Norris a better fighting chance.

“It’s not guaranteed because Lewis managed to keep the tyres in good shape so like you know you have to overtake,” he explained.

“I think we could have got in the gearbox of Lewis but overtaking is a slightly different matter.”

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