McLaren Formula 1 boss Andreas Stella says that the team avoided pursuing a one-stop strategy with Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris at Spa because the outcome could have been “painful” if it didn’t work.
Stella also believes that the team has to be “cautious with adventurous strategies” as it focusses on its fight with main rivals Red Bull.
George Russell stunned rivals by being the only driver at the front of the field to make only one stop and finishing first on the road prior, with Lewis Hamilton and Piastri still stuck behind him, prior to his disqualification.
Meanwhile Norris crossed the line in sixth place, just behind Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen.
“In hindsight, we considered that,” said Stella when asked about Russell’s one-stop. “We were not adamant that that was going to work. And in case this kind of strategy doesn’t work, it can become very, very painful, because then it’s too late to pit, and therefore you may lose a lot of positions.
“This one was pretty extreme, I think, in terms of considering this, because if you commit to this, and it doesn’t work, you properly screw up a race day.
“With Oscar, we thought we had strong pace, and we were in condition to use a more conventional two-stop to recover positions.
“I think the two factors that were different from our initial expectations, were the degradation on the tyres was lower than expected, but if anything, and above all, overtaking was more difficult.”
Stella says passing was much harder in the Spa race than had been anticipated.
“That surprised us,” he said. “And when you had a bit of tyre advantage, it was still not enough to overtake, because like we saw with Lewis and Russell, I don’t think the positions were frozen.
“That’s why I understood simply that with the effect of the dirty air it was just not possible to overtake as easily as we thought. I think in Russell’s position, there was potentially more motivation to take a risky approach, but for us, we want to think slightly more robustly.
“We scored again higher than Red Bull. I think we need to be a little cautious with adventurous strategies, which in hindsight, today actually proved to be good.”
Asked by formu1a.uno if it might have been worth taking more of a risk with Norris given that he was out of position after his poor start Stella conceded that it might have been an option.
“Potentially,” he said. “I need to review this one. I have to say, like potentially. We need to understand if Lando was in the in the right position to do so, because obviously, having extended, you tend to lose some positions on track.
“For us, the plan with Lando was robust. It’s just that we were a little surprised that we could not overtake. The other one, where we were surprised, and this could be also to do with how good Verstappen is as a driver, is he made the medium last in the final stint, like not many other drivers managed to do.
“And we were just expecting that his tyres would have fallen off, and they didn’t. So we thought overtaking Verstappen would have been easy, and it proved not to be the case. I’m I left to review whether with land, would have been a good idea to just follow what Russell was doing.”
Stella stressed that tyres were the key factor in Belgium, and that Mercedes did a better job than rivals.
“I keep receiving observations that McLaren is the best car,” he said. “I always keep putting some water on the fire and say there’s four cars that are pretty much at the same level, and there’s a bit of a bit of variability, which is a function of the track.
“It’s a function even of the conditions, to some extent. In this hot temperature, Mercedes did a good job of making the tyre last that long.
“It’s all to be proven that we would have been in condition to do such a long stint, because we saw different times this year. For instance, completely different conditions, but even in Silverstone Lando and Hamilton, they had both used softs, and somehow Lewis managed to keep them alive and win the race in Silverstone. For us, the tyres went off.
“In some other conditions, we actually seem to be good with tyres. So it looks like everything is so close together that some small factors and variable circumstances can modify the pecking order.
“And like I always say, this is really good and interesting for F1. And I’m pleased that we could offer another very entertaining race.”
