Andrea Stella says they haven’t pinned that they will divide strategy for rest of F1 2025 according to last few races, as he notes how they see the rest of the year.
The first half saw few races where McLaren were forced to divide the strategies of the two drivers. Most recent case was in Hungary, which eventually helped Lando Norris to secure the win over Oscar Piastri. This has led to debates of favouritism after the Brit got the larger chunk of help.
When asked if it will become the norm, team boss Stella played down the notion of different strategies in the races to come. He sees strategy deviation as part of racing. The main agenda when they divide the strategy is that either of Norris and Piastri knows what is happening.
They have made sure to alert them and both of them have been receptive of it as well. “We are open racing, we bring the value of racing into Formula One,” said Stella to media. “So we want to give great racing for Formula One. We want to give our two drivers the possibility to utilise, express their talent, pursue their aspirations, their personal success.
“And this needs to happen within the boundaries of the team interest and fairness, the sportsmanship and the respect for one another. For me, this is what I see. When we have a deviating strategy, when we have different options, I think this is part of racing. We want to make sure that none of the drivers is surprised. And I think none of the drivers was surprised.
“So far, I can only be very grateful to the way Lando and Oscar have interpreted the way we go racing as a team, as a group, which include the drivers. And I’m sure this is going to be the same until the end of the season,” summed up Stella, who also expanded on the competition ahead and how he sees the remainder of F1 2025 will pan out for McLaren.
He expects challenge from some of his rivals, but the updates from McLaren has helped them to keep their nose ahead which is a plus going into the second half. “I think we have seen a very positive trend in terms of our competitiveness, especially I would say over the last few events in which we have finished in P1 and P2,” continued Stella.
“Like I said in some other interviews, this is not only because we started with a competitive car, but actually we have upgraded the car since Canada with what was in the past a single instrument upgrade, so it wouldn’t be very noticeable. McLaren bring a new car and improves by a few tenths of a second, but in the recent races we have upgraded the car with some parts at pretty much each race. So, we have become faster.
“I think in Hungaroring, despite the result in Q3, has actually proven that the car is fast. I think every single session we were P1-P2 by a decent chunk compared to the next team. This makes us very positive about the remainder of the season. We look forward to starting racing again after the shutdown. I think we have some tracks that will be favourable to us again, like Zandvoort.
“And we have also done some specific work for some tracks like Monza or Vegas, in which not necessarily last year we were dominant, and we knew that we needed to do some work for the performance after all that. So, we definitely look forward to the second part of the season, and we expect to be competitive,” summed up Stella.
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