Oscar Piastri stunned many by beating team-mate Lando Norris to pole position for the Dutch Grand Prix, despite having trailed him through practice.
But according to McLaren team principal Andrea Stella, the Australian’s superior performance was not the result of a sudden technical breakthrough – rather, it came from fine-tuning his driving and extracting marginal gains where they mattered most.
Norris had appeared untouchable throughout the weekend at Zandvoort, topping all three practice sessions and reinforcing his status as the driver to beat, one year after his commanding performance at the same venue.
Piastri, however, showed early signs of competitiveness by outpacing Norris in Q1. Norris regained the upper hand in Q2, leading by a tenth, but Piastri’s decisive Q3 lap flipped the script.
Margins Always Close Between the Two
Stella downplayed any notion of a dramatic setup change, instead highlighting the tight competition between the two drivers.
“In reality, even yesterday, when at times Oscar might have been a little distant from Lando, I think the distance was not large at all,” Stella told reporters.
“We knew, the drivers knew, that what we were saying in our debriefs that the situation was very close between the two drivers, and each of them had some corners in which there was a margin to improve.”
That closeness, Stella added, created a healthy dynamic inside McLaren, with both drivers constantly forcing each other to raise the bar.
Driver Synergy and Adaptation
The key to Piastri’s pole, according to Stella, lay in the drivers’ ability to learn from each other and adapt their driving styles, particularly in response to challenging conditions like the wind at Zandvoort.
“Like I’ve said several times, having two competitive drivers makes the whole team and the car look better because they can pick from one another,” the Italian explained.
Rather than relying on significant setup tweaks, both drivers fine-tuned their approach on the track.
“So I think what Oscar has done, likewise Lando has done, they have seen where there was the opportunity to go a little bit faster, adjust the driving input and, I would say that for both Oscar and Lando, this is the way in which both have found some performance more than some set-up adjustments,” Stella said.
“So it was more in the driving and in adapting to the wind rather than finding some relevant solutions with car set-up or car specification.”
With just 0.012s separating the two McLarens, Piastri’s ability to convert lessons into pole position underscored not only his own adaptability but also the competitive balance within the team.
Stella’s comments made clear: at McLaren, performance swings are as much about the driver’s finesse as the machinery beneath them.
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