Andrea Stella says McLaren left itself in a position where it was safer to pit its two cars out of sequence because it was chasing the best chance of stealing victory from Max Verstappen.
The Red Bull driver dominated at Monza, but McLaren was not under serious threat from behind so ran long before pitting for soft tires in the closing stages. Such a late stop allowed Charles Leclerc – who stopped earlier – to start closing in slightly, and Stella explained why that scenario was allowed to develop before pitting the second car of Oscar Piastri before the lead one of Lando Norris.
“Obviously stopping to cover Leclerc would have been the simple solution to the way the race would have unfolded, but it would have limited the result,” Stella said. “So we wanted to find a way to pursue a bigger result.
“In case of a red flag it would have been quite strong, with the two McLarens leading, or even in terms of a Safety Car up until a certain point, it would have been strong. And also we wanted to stop late enough to go on softs, because then if there had been a late Safety Car we would have been on softs with Verstappen on hards.
“So there were incentives from a racing point of view, and from an overall point of view, to stay out.”
With Piastri – third on track behind Norris – brought in first, it was the reverse order compared to how teams usually stop drivers, and a slow pit stop for Norris led to a team order to swap positions. Stella says the situation will be looked into, but that it doesn’t necessarily mean McLaren would do anything differently in future.
“Had we gone first with Lando, I think even despite the [slow] pit stop, if you do the calculations, with such a powerful undercut that you have with a new soft, he could have recovered quite a bit of the time we lost.
“So for us it was relatively simple to say the intent was we were not going to swap positions [by stopping Piastri first]. In terms of the pit stop itself, we are going to review all the data we have available and pick up whatever learning we have for the future.
“I think we first of all need to agree on what the word ‘review’ means. Reviewing is the foundation of pursuing excellence. For me reviewing it doesn’t mean we have to change. Potentially we will review and we might further align and confirm.”
