McLaren trio of Oscar Piastri, Lando Norris and Andrea Stella dissect if one stop was possible in F1 Italian GP, as the latter stresses on Ferrari being quick too.
While McLaren led the way at the start of F1 Italian GP at Monza, where Piastri made a bold move on Norris to take the lead, they were eventually outfoxed by Ferrari in the strategy department after the Italian outfit opted for a one stop strategy.
The hard tyre degradation helped Ferrari where they had nothing to lose, considering they would have been third and fourth anyhow. But the gamble paid off as Leclerc drove a fantastic race, which was complimented by McLaren chief Stella too.
The Italian thought Ferrari were as competitive as McLaren, especially at the hands of Leclerc. He concedes that if they had opted for one stop with Piastri, there was a sure chance of a win and they let it slip slightly but that is all in hindsight.
The Australian reckoned he did all he could especially when they committed to a two stop. His catch-up of Leclerc was compromised due to the efforts of Carlos Sainz and also Lance Stroll, who did not move out of the as quick when shown the blue flags.
Norris, meanwhile, did not enjoy as much. After losing out early on, he couldn’t stay with the leading group as close as he would have liked to. He thought that McLaren killed their tyres far too much to be able to undertake the one stop strategy.
Race –
Piastri: “Clearly not as seriously as I needed to. I think, for me, it was a big risk to do that. You know, the graining of the tyres has been a big topic all weekend. You know, in practice, once you got graining, it was basically game over. Even in the first stint on the Mediums, it was pretty difficult. And, yeah, when we made the second stop, for myself, my front left tyre was pretty heavily grained and, you know, I was going slower and slower. So it seemed like a sensible decision to pit again. Yeah, you know, I guess nobody really expected the graining to clear up on Charles, from what I heard. So yeah, in hindsight, clearly stopping once was the right thing to do.
“But from that point in the race with all the information that we’d gathered through the weekend, it seemed incredibly risky and. You know, that’s kind of the blessing and the curse of leading the race or, you know, being at the front, full stop. You know, the guys behind you can react to what you do. And, you know, for Charles, if he did a two-stop, he would have locked in third. And if he did a one-stop and fell off the cliff, he still would have finished third. But, of course, he pulled the one-stop off and Ferrari look like the hero today. Yeah, obviously it hurts at the moment, but I think in the moment it was the right thing to do.”
Norris: “Pretty disappointing. Yeah, which is obvious from the outside even. I mean, Charles drove a great race, honestly. Hard to know if we could have done what he did today, but they deserved it. Yeah, both Oscar and Charles drove a good race. So, yeah, disappointing, starting from pole and ending third, especially when I think the pace was very strong. So, a shame, but that’s what it is.”
Stella: “In terms of the race today, I think there maybe a misunderstanding that the McLaren was by far the fastest car. I think Leclerc was as fast as McLaren today because he could stay with Oscar in the first stint and normally when you have the dirty air and you can stay with the race leader you are at least as fast as the race leader. This normally leads to some degradation, like Leclerc had in the final bit of the first stint. And even in the second stint he was behind two McLarens and still he could stay with the McLarens. Even if you look at the practice and the qualifying I think lap times were essentially within the noise of putting together laps.
“So I think Ferrari this weekend they were as competitive as us, at least with Leclerc, which for us is somehow bad news because it meant we couldn’t simply cruise in the race and we needed to deal with them and they did a good job at exploiting some of their strengths. But at the same time it’s good news because we have more cars that can take points away off Red Bull. So actually I think this is better news for us and we need to make sure we maximise the potential that is available in the car, even if it means that at these kind of circuits Ferrari will set a very serious challenge for the victory.”
Done things differently –
Piastri: “Not massively I don’t think. I need to go back and look at what the graining level on Charles was when I pitted for the second time. Up until that point it was you know a pretty controlled race. We felt pretty early on that it was a two-stop race and maybe in hindsight, there are things we could have done a bit differently from obviously a strategy point of view, but also a driving point of view to keep the options open a little bit more.
“But if the information I got is right, on the radio, then it wasn’t really a matter of driving slower. It was just kind of sticking with the graining and getting through it, which given in practice when that happened you basically couldn’t hit the brake pedal because you turned your front left into a 50 cent coin, it seemed like a very risky thing to do so. Obviously, it was the right thing in hindsight but everyone’s a lot smarter when the chequered flag falls.”
Norris: “I mean, we tried, we knew it was a quicker thing to do, but I think, yeah, we just killed the tyres a little bit too easily. And like Oscar said, when you’re in third, it’s a much easier position to just try and risk and do such a thing. So I don’t think we can be too disappointed. I think it was a lot riskier for us to try and do it than it was for Charles, and he made it work. So, yeah, hats off to them and Ferrari and himself because the driving part makes a big difference out there. We thought of it and we wanted to do it. We just we couldn’t today. I think it was clear yesterday. We had a good qualifying car. But today our race car was probably not quite good enough.”
Stella: “I think in hindsight, especially with Oscar, after the stop, if we had driven the car to say, like we drive for a one-stop, even if we see the graining on the hard tyres, we don’t get too worried, and we just simply try and respond to Leclerc, then I think the victory could have been possible. The thing is, you go into some of the variations in terms of how much you use the front tyres from car to car, and I think our car, traditionally, tends to be very good on the rear tyres. But when we deal with front graining, we tend to be on the aggressive side. So this made us a bit nervous, especially after Lando had a lockup on the front left a couple of laps before, which for us normally would have been the symptom that tyres were starting to struggle.
“But in hindsight I think there wasn’t enough degradation for Leclerc to actually, for us, go and beat him on a two stop as we missed by a couple of laps – but a couple of laps is a lot. So it remains a question mark, whether we could have won the race or not. But it looks like there was potentially more in the tyres than what we might have anticipated. Obviously everybody entered the race with doubts as to the tyres because nobody runs the hard tyres and when you are pitting it is easier to say let me try the one stop than when you have the lead, and if it doesn’t work it is going to be a misery at the end of the race.”
Late stages, Stroll issue –
Piastri: “I mean, I asked basically straight away what pace I needed to do to go and get Charles. And the pace I needed was basically what I did for the first few laps. And at that point, I was pretty optimistic. You know, I lost a decent amount of time behind Carlos. You had Stroll driving like it was his first go-kart race and I don’t know what went through his brain when he saw his blue flag. That cost another second. And, yeah, you know, I needed that stint to be perfect to win that race. And, you know, those little things are ultimately what cost us a bit of a chance. It would have been a long shot anyway, but, yeah. It was certainly not far off from being able to achieve it. But yeah, I was pushing flat out to try and do it. I couldn’t have gone any faster than that. So yep, just came up a bit short.”
Here’s Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Andrea Stella on Lap 1 scene
Here’s how F1 Italian GP panned out
Here’s link to a F1 Discord channel, join in to interact