The British GP was another race of missed opportunity for McLaren. Their first major blunder was with Oscar Piastri, who lost about 20 seconds doing an extra lap on dry tyres on a wet track. However, victory was still there for the taking with Lando Norris – at least until the team allowed the 23-year-old to be undercut by Lewis Hamilton at the final pit-stop phase.
The final nail in the coffin came when McLaren elected against using their available set of medium tyres. On several occasions during the race, the McLaren pit wall reminded Norris and Piastri that – unlike their rivals – they had a fresh set of medium tyres available.
The Woking-based team felt this gave them an advantage. This assessment was correct, given that Piastri was as fast as anybody in the final stages of the races.
Despite all this, then-race leader Norris was not given the yellow-walled tyres. This, combined with taking too long to make the call for Norris to stop, saw another victory escape from the team’s fingers.
After the controversy of last week’s Austria GP, there can be no excuses or distractions for Andrea Stella’s personnel. They have thrown away multiple victories this year. With better strategy and operational efficiency, the team could have realistically closed the gap to Red Bull in the standings.
Lando Norris, McLaren F1 Team
Norris: I made the wrong decisions
Speaking post-race, Lando Norris was self-critical:
“As a team, I don’t think we did quite the job we should have done, or good enough, but still lovely to be on the podium here.
“I don’t know. I’m not making the right decisions.
“At the same time, I blame myself today for not making some of the right decisions. I hate it – I hate ending in this position and having excuses for not doing a good enough job…
“I think we still did so many things right, so many positives. Especially here in Silverstone, the one place I would love for everything to go perfectly, it didn’t today. But I’m good. We’ll come back stronger next year and try again.”
The good news for McLaren is that, despite missing out on a potential 1-2 finish today, the MCL38’s performance is undeniable. There is still plenty of time to capitalise on this race-winning machinery and put Red Bull under pressure.
Andrea Stella’s engineers still deserve credit for closing the gap and providing the necessary updates for Norris and Piastri to challenge.
However, McLaren are not the only team fighting at the front. Mercedes are re-establishing themselves as contenders once more, and Ferrari cannot be completely written off.
Considering that Perez has scored 11 points in the last five rounds, McLaren will unlikely have the same golden opportunity to close the gap as they had between Monaco and Silverstone.
That said, with sound strategy and error-free weekends, they can still compensate for their recent blunders. Norris and Piastri proved once again today that, if mistakes are avoided, very big points gauls are on the table.
