Andrea Stella commented on McLaren’s double podium in China, emphasizing the great balance between the top four teams.
McLaren achieved its second victory in as many races and its first double podium of the season in Shanghai. Oscar Piastri’s win was never in doubt, and he immediately matched Lando Norris‘ victory in Australia. It was an authoritative win for the Papaya team, which showed its superiority over the other teams, but Andrea Stella doesn’t quite see it that way.
ChatGPT ha detto: Here are the words of McLaren’s team principal at the end of the Chinese Grand Prix: “We didn’t do two laps with the softs in the sprint qualifying to look ‘arrogant,’ but for the opposite reason: we wanted to be conservative because we didn’t trust that we could complete a clean single lap with the softs, so we opted for two attempts. On this track, the tires can still perform even if they’re used for a lap, which is why we adopted this strategy. It’s a matter of perspective, and I have to say that, despite the two laps, it still wasn’t enough. Lando, in the second attempt, could have set a good time, but an imperfection penalized him.”
Stella then added: “We know that the car is not easy to drive with new tires, and to be honest, on the first day, we encountered issues with both the tires and the balance. That’s why we had to assess the situation carefully during the Sprint Qualifying and the Sprint Race, learning a lot and making changes both to the car and the driving style of both drivers. They both understood that they couldn’t drive the same way as in Melbourne. There was an adaptation, and I’m satisfied with the work done by both the drivers and the team.
Regarding the Sprint weekend, I have to say that we didn’t have an advantage: Ferrari was superior. However, thanks to the adjustments, we found performance again, but I believe that both in qualifying and the race, we didn’t have more than a couple of tenths of an advantage, perhaps. That means we were pushing throughout the race. Naturally, you never do it at 100% due to tire management, especially after switching to the hard tires. We were watching the tire behavior and evaluating the strategy. For example, we were observing Stroll, who was out with the hard tires, to see if a one-stop or two-stop strategy could work.”
On the competitiveness of the four teams and the small gap between them, he added: “In any case, the competitiveness between the teams was very close. I don’t think there was a big difference between McLaren, Ferrari, Mercedes, and Red Bull this weekend. This confirms the trend of a very balanced Formula 1, where sometimes small adjustments make the difference. Regarding the 2026 regulations, we know that every regulatory change brings a degree of uncertainty, as happened in 2022. There was a period of Red Bull dominance, but today we have a very interesting and balanced championship, perhaps more so than in a long time. We need to be patient and see how things evolve.”
