McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has explained the decisions that the squad took during today's Hungarian Grand Prix, which included ordering Lando Norris to hand certain victory to his team mate Oscar Piastri.
Norris has started on pole but lost the lead into the first corner at the start, but regained it in the final round of pit stops when he came in before Piastri and benefitted from the undercut to take the lead.
“We knew that by going first with Lando that could have been the situation, but we wouldn’t have done it if we weren’t sure that this would be fixed,” Stella acknowledged.
The team planned to restore Piastri to the front after the pit stops but that didn't happen, leading to increasingly desperate messages to Norris to obey team orders and allow Piastri to catch up and pass him.
Norris finally did this with three laps to go but was clearly unhappy. But Stella explained that the team had been focused on delivering heir first 1-2 success since the 2021 Italian Grand Prix without making any mistakes.
“I think today, because we are at the Hungaroring and because it was so hot, there were two variables that we really wanted to get right," he explained to the media after the race.
“The first was, we didn’t want to pit [Oscar] too early because the tyres were degrading a lot and we didn’t want to run out of tyres should Max Verstappen become a problem at the end of the race.
"Therefore we just wanted to delay the pitstop as much as possible," he continued. “Now we see that the tyres were actually easier than we thought, but that was not a given.
[Oscar]'s pace was still reasonable, but it goes back to making sure the tyres don’t degrade at the end of the race," he emphasised. "The second element is that you can have a problem at the pitstop, so you need to go safe from a pit stop point of view.
“Do you want to pit only when you have three seconds? Because then you know what happens that all the pressure goes on the pit crew," referring back to the British GP where pit lane and strategy stumbles cost Norris a chance of victory.
“I did not want to have a situation at the pitstop where there’s a problem with a nut, that there’s a problem with the execution that puts us behind a Mercedes or a Ferrari.
“I don’t want in a race like today that the responsibility goes to the pit crew. I’d rather take the responsibility at the pit wall, secure the P1, P2 and then we manage the situation between the pit wall and the drivers."
Verstappen nearly did become a threat at the end, leaving it late to switch to fresh mediums and quickly picking off Charles Leclerc. But his attempt to pass Lewis Hamilton ended in contact with the Mercedes and took him out of the equation.
“We have seen with Verstappen today what can happen. Verstappen would have had the tyres much fresher than the guys ahead. So I think we would be talking something else if that was the case like it happened to Verstappen.
Stella insisted that no matter how it had come across on the live television coverage, there had never been a sense of crisis within the McLaren team.
"I know that for watching on TV this becomes a story, but for us internally this becomes part of the way we go racing.
"That’s why we invest so much in culture, in values, and in the mindset, because we want to be able to manage this situation if we want to be in the championship with Lando, with Oscar, and with McLaren.”
While Norris initially appeared set to reject the team orders to let Piastri take the lead, Stella said he had no doubt that the young Briton would do the right thing.
“I trust Lando 100 per cent,” he told the official F1 channel. “I know exactly the nature of the two boys that drive the McLaren cars.
“Inside them there are two important aspects: The race driver and the team player. They are very well balanced and that’s why they are the McLaren drivers.
"There wouldn’t be space for drivers with different characteristics to drive a papaya car right now," he continued.
Stella also explained why he left it to Norris' race engineer Will Joseph to persuade his driver to comply rather than jumping on the team radio and issuing orders from on high.
I thought it was more for Will,” Stella said. “I said: ‘Now Will I’ll leave you the difficult job, rebalance the race driver and the team player’.
“But I was absolutely trusting that Lando would collaborate to re-establish the order that was simply altered to protect the result of the team from having a problem at the pit stop today.
"So it’s sound from a team point of view," he insisted. “I feel very lucky, I have to say, that I can be the team principal of such a team and these kind of drivers.”
Stella also didn't want the controversy to overshadow what was a remarkable achievement in terms of the final race result for McLaren.
"It’s a milestone for the team in terms of our positive trajectory that we have established over the last year," he said. “So it’s very important, but ultimately it doesn’t really change our mindset.
"Our mindset is to keep our feet on the ground, be determined, try to improve every day, and make sure that we can enjoy more of these kind of qualifying and races.”
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