Andrea Stella opened up on what transpired in qualifying of F1 Saudi Arabian GP and how Lando Norris and McLaren as a whole are handling things.
It looked all good for Norris and McLaren until the Q3 of F1 Saudi Arabian GP. On his first attempt, the Brit ran over the kerb at Turn 4 and it slammed him onto the wall at Turn 5 exit, ending his chance of pole or a front-row start, allowing his rivals to end up ahead.
The biggest gainer was Oscar Piastri, who is closest to him in the standings. Even though Max Verstappen took pole, the Australian remains his biggest rival for the F1 title considering the advantage that McLaren has over its rivals like Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes.
Norris was certainly dejected after the qualifying crash, but held his ground and put up a brave face in front of media. It will be another recovery drive for the Brit rather than starting from the front and controlling things. Only a miracle will aide him to win from 10th against fast rivals.
Team boss Stella noted about his changed stance from Bahrain to Saudi Arabia, as the immediate focus was on getting the car fixed and optimising the best strategy for the grand prix. There is certain confidence hit, but as race drivers, the Italian feels that they will come over it.
He reiterated McLaren’s situation, in terms of unpredictability when going for the extra millisecond. They have made the car faster from last year, but it has led to some unpredictability which is hurting Norris more than Piastri. It is that extra millisecond push that led to a silly mistake.
He accepts that as a team they have to do better as well to eliminate that unpredictably, which will aide the drivers to push and not worry about such incidents, but until the updates comes, they have to live with it, especially Norris who is suffering the most in this situation.
What happened in quali –
Stella: “Lando this weekend was definitely quite competitive. Every single session, every set of tyres, he put together good laps, competitive laps. I think in addition to the utilisation of new tyres which was very good. He also pulled off quite some impressive race pace, which was very good. I think it was all ready for a really strong weekend but I think in Q3, when Lando tries to squeeze a few more milliseconds out of the car, what we see – and I think we are starting to see even better in data like in terms of identification of what is going – and when he tries to squeeze this extra millisecond, the car just doesn’t respond as he expects. So I think this is a behaviour that kind of surprises him. Today it surprised him. The car understeered a bit in corner 4, ended up on the outside kerb, and this outside kerb can be quite unforgiving. So in a way it’s almost episodical, what’s happening. It’s an episode. And it’s an episode that I think starts from some of the work that we have done on the car. It made the car faster overall, but I think it took something away from Lando in terms of predictability of the car once he pushes the car at the limit.
“So it’s the responsibility of the team to try and improve the car and to try and correct his behaviour, because we want Lando to be confident, comfortable, that he can push the car, and when he needs to find a few milliseconds, he can do it with a behaviour of the car that, OK, maybe you realise I pushed a bit too much, but without these sort of macroscopic consequences. So I see very much of a responsibility of the team in terms of improving the situation, and what’s important from Lando’s side is that in the meantime, while we don’t improve it, he maintains the confidence and he maintains an availability to adapt. You know, like these cars are so fast. They are so demanding in terms of just adopting a very natural driving style. We hear this from, like, you know, even from Hamilton, seven times world champion, and yet he talks about driving the car in a natural way, because these cars are too fast to think. You either kind of get what you anticipate from the car, or you’re going to be slow, and Lando doesn’t accept to be slow. So it’s our responsibility to make sure that we give him a car that is at the level of his talent.”
Spare parts –
Stella: “No, no concerns. No concerns. It’s obviously a lot of parts that we will have to change, and we already started. The chassis is not damaged, which is the most important news, at least for what we have been able to assess so far. So we will repair the car. No problem with specification. Even because we haven’t brought any upgrades, and definitely we need to bring upgrades. Maybe we can talk about that later. So it’s just replacing parts with the spares, and we go again.”
Confidence –
Stella: “Look, you talk about confidence, and confidence is definitely one of the fundamental elements through which you drive in a very natural way, as we said before. Almost a subconscious way, I would say. But to have this kind of approach from a driver’s point of view, you need the car to do…You almost need to be ahead of the car, because if you wait for the response of the car, then you’re going to be too late, like I said before, with considering the speed of these cars. I think, to some extent, I don’t think in broadcasting… We are not giving the sense of how fast this generation of cars is in 2025 and the demand for the drivers. I wouldn’t think that we talk about self-fulfilling prophecy. I think what we talk about is that there is a very tight field. In Q2, there were the four suspects, Lando, Oscar, Russell and Verstappen in one-tenth of a second. The gap between Oscar and Verstappen in Q2 was 16 milliseconds, and then it was, what, 10 milliseconds in Q3.
“Lando was actually leading Q2, but I think he realized that he needed to find a bit of performance in Q3. So I don’t think it has to do with prophecies or the driver getting confidence. I think it just has to do that I push one meter later the braking, I’m one kph faster, mid-corner, and at some stage the car does a thing that I’m not just anticipating. And now I’m becoming a bit of a passenger, especially at this track in which basically there’s no…It’s very unforgiving if you are one meter off what is the normal racing line. There’s a few like Hungary, some other circuits, in which you can afford to get it wrong by half a meter, and then you get it into the noise of a variability overlap. But here the consequences can be quite macroscopic. So I think, like I said before, it’s about getting the car to do what the drivers expect, and in particular Lando.”
How is Norris handling things –
Stella: “The confidence this weekend was definitely better than in Bahrain. We were all very encouraged, and I think this has been proven by the performance as well. You know, when you have an incident in qualifying, it’s always unfortunate because, like today, Lando could have been in the first row, and now we’re starting from tenth. But these guys are race drivers, they have done this their entire life. I’m sure that’s not the only disappointing Saturday that Lando might have had in his career. We are all, drivers included, very, you say thick-skinned, I think in English? Yes. So, thick-skinned, very used to that, very determined. If anything, like in the briefing, I think our focus immediately shifted onto what tyres for tomorrow, how do we try to use the performance that we have shown on Friday. It’s not only a moral aspect, it’s also almost a methodological aspect, like how do I move from this point into, good, there’s a race tomorrow, let’s be programmed, let’s go and actually use this disappointment as additional determination. That was the conversation in the briefing, if you want. That’s the sport, and I think when you are into the sport, when you are the athlete or the engineers, you are well-trained and sometimes you just have these five minutes of disappointment and then you know how to convert it. This is what I’ve seen has happened with Lando and also with the team.
“Not only the next 24 hours but I would say that after 5 minutes or at least after 5 minutes Lando was here back in the office immediately the mindset changed. That’s not the position that we want to be in a race in which we could have started from the front row but actually we take it as an opportunity to show our determination to show the strength from our attitudinal point of view in terms of our mindset and like I said this was very much what we talked about in the debrief post qualifying and also the genuine attitude that everyone brought into the debriefing and into preparing and positioning the team for having a good race tomorrow. I really hope that we will be in condition to have some free laps free air laps tomorrow use the pace that we saw on Friday and this weekend could actually be a weekend from which we come out stronger reinforced, even more confident because we see our strengths and I think this aspect of the qualifying like I said before is very episodical we just have to sort of understand how to deal with the fact that perhaps sometimes you just don’t have to go for the final few milliseconds until we make the car just more genuine in terms of the queuing and the feedback that the car gives to the drivers this is 100% the responsibility of the team.”
Car performance predictable/unpredictable –
Stella: “I think, obviously, the car has a certain envelope of performance. That’s what the car can give you. But the way you exploit this envelope is a little tricky for our drivers. It’s very easy from, like, there’s a lot of grip, there’s a lot of grip, the grip disappears. Like you go one kph faster and the grip disappears. Like this transition seems to be quite sharp and the feedback you receive from the car in terms of understanding I’m leaning on this limit is relatively numb. So I think that’s where, you know, the drivers almost have to use a lot of guessing as to how the car will behave and there’s not much information and cueing coming from the car. I think that’s what we are struggling a bit from a team point of view in terms of achieving what we want in designing a car that provides this kind of feedback to drivers and what the drivers may struggle on their side because they need to use quite a lot of guessing as to what the car will be doing.
“This is not a position that myself, as a team principal, I want to be. We need to do a better job of designing a car that allows the drivers to realise where the limit is, lean on that, get good cueing from the car. So that’s the most I can explain. I don’t want to give up too much. I think it would be too much detail also from an IP point of view but hopefully it gives you the sense of the kind. And I think you see that every session when we sort of push 99%, we seem to be having a decent competitiveness but when it’s the time to add that final one tenth of a second then it gets pretty tricky to go and materialise it.”
Here’s what Lando Norris said after crash
Here’s Lando Norris in-depth after Bahrain
Here’s Lando Norris on Bahrain, Andrea Stella on car suiting Oscar Piastri
