McLaren boss Andrea Stella has explained the logic behind the team’s choices during the Japanese Grand Prix.

With Red Bull’s Max Verstappen leading the race at Suzuka from pole position, McLaren opted against trying any disruptive strategies with its two drivers and, instead, followed the Red Bull around for the entire 53-lap race.

Andrea Stella opens up on McLaren’s strategy choices

With Verstappen, Lando Norris, and Oscar Piastri all starting on the medium tyre, the leading trio pulled away from the pursuing pack during the first stint of the race.

Verstappen was enjoying the clear air up front and, against expectation, began eking out a small gap to Norris behind – extending this gap up to around two seconds by Lap 10. But Norris appeared to have the gap under control and seemed to just want to stay out of Verstappen’s dirty air, keeping the gap at two seconds while keeping a watching brief on Piastri close behind.

About three seconds covered the top three for the entire first stint of the race before Piastri was the first of them to pit as he dived in on Lap 20 to take on the hard tyre compound.

With the hard tyres not offering a clear and immediate huge pace advantage, the effect of the undercut wasn’t as powerful at Suzuka as at many tracks throughout the year, and the Australian driver remained a net third behind Verstappen and Norris when they pitted a lap later.

Verstappen, resuming the lead once Kimi Antonelli and Lewis Hamilton pitted, continued to soak up the pressure from the two McLaren drivers for the remaining 32 laps and led home the nose-to-tail trio as the Woking-based squad appeared to be out of ideas as to how to try getting ahead of Verstappen.

Certainly, there had been some strategic gambles open to McLaren, particularly with the team having two drivers directly behind Verstappen before the pitstop sequence.

With an attempt at selling a dummy to Red Bull by calling in Norris via a clear “box to overtake Verstappen” instruction going unheeded by its rivals, which McLaren team boss Andrea Stella explained as being an attempt to “see if they would react”, the next question mark was over when to pit their drivers.

The most obvious attempt at trying to get ahead of Verstappen would have been to try pitting Norris first, rather than Piastri, and see whether the undercut attempt could have worked.

“We could… it’s unclear whether we could, but I think that pitting Lando would have meant that we could not pit Oscar, and this would have been a problem for Oscar,” Stella told the media at Suzuka after the chequered flag.

The problem was due to the proximity of the pack behind, with several fast cars within a pitstop gap, meaning the risk of losing track position.

“Oscar would have waited, which I think would have been a problem with the cars – especially Russell – that pitted and that we needed to cover,” Stella explained.

Given that the undercut’s effect wasn’t particularly powerful, regardless, the Italian explained that the already risky choice of pitting Norris first was exacerbated by the fact that an ill-timed Safety Car could have wreaked further havoc.

“We will review, obviously, the gaps, in terms of time, to understand whether there was the possibility to go for an undercut with Lando that could actually be executed on Max,” he said.

“We don’t have to forget, though, that by giving up track positions, you also expose the car that you pit to a Safety Car risk. Lando would have lost positions, should a Safety Car be deployed.

“So, in hindsight, you don’t see any Safety Car, you don’t see anything, and you think, ‘Oh, here, I might have gone for the undercut’, but an undercut attempt comes with some risks. It was apparent that the degradation was low so I think, if you lose position with a Safety Car, it’s lost.

“I don’t think we could have overtaken a Ferrari or a Mercedes today.”

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The next option for McLaren could have been to have instructed Norris to stay out if Verstappen pitted, rather than following the Dutch driver down the pitlane and attempted an overcut instead. But, while the undercut wasn’t as powerful as is often seen, its effect was still enough to nullify this possibility.

“The problem for Lando would be that he would have lost positions to some other cars, including Oscar, because they had pitted, and they were faster,” Norris said.

“If you stay out on a 20-lap used medium, you cannot be faster than somebody that fitted on a hard.

“The situation became very clear when Russell pitted, and he was very fast on a new hard. It was apparent that the hard was working well.

“In Barcelona, or Suzuka in the past, you can gain four or five laps of tyre delta and then, when you pit – even if you pit behind the car that stopped before – you will pass him because you have better tyres.

“But here, the tyres almost don’t degrade at all from one lap to the other.

“We kept seeing purple sectors and purple laps until the final lap. So it was a low-degradation race. It’s a tricky one. Qualifying becomes very relevant when you have these types of races.”

With the two McLarens stuck behind Verstappen as the race entered its closing stages and Norris gently chipping away at Verstappen’s lead to almost get within DRS range, Piastri appeared the quicker driver as he got within DRS range of his teammate.

So why didn’t McLaren swap their two drivers and give the apparently quicker driver a chance at toppling Verstappen? The reason for this, Stella explained, was that it was not evident Piastri was actually quicker.

“I think Lando was trying to get in Max’s slipstream even closer,” he said.

“But, anytime you went to below one second, there was a significant loss of grip. So then Lando was doing a little bit of an elastic [band] today, trying to cool his tyres down a bit and then going again.

“So I don’t think it is a situation that we should judge at face value in terms of what the pace of the car was.

“Lando was trying to get close to Verstappen with maximum momentum, but it was difficult.”

With Verstappen not crumbling under the pressure and taking the win ahead of two stymied McLarens, the lack of opportunities brought about by the durable tyres and the one-stop strategy meant McLaren needed a bigger pace advantage than the MCL39 had over the RB21.

Had this same race occurred on the older, more abrasive asphalt that was in place before the circuit’s recent resurfacing, Stella believes it would have been advantage McLaren – the MCL39 being kind to its tyres would have opened the doors of greater possibilities.

“It was something we knew, right from the start, that, at this track, you need seven or eight-tenths of performance advantage in order to be able to overtake,” he said.

“Normally, this sort of lap time difference may be generated because there is degradation in the tyres. But, with the new tarmac, Suzuka has changed the feature of being a high-degradation circuit.

“It is now a very low-degradation circuit. It was a very easy one-stop and not many strategic options.

“Certainly, I think I would have preferred old-style Suzuka before the resurfacing because, in a situation like that, I think we could have exploited the good qualities of our car.

“But when the tyres behave so strongly, basically we have no additional qualities because everyone has very low degradation. Hopefully, Bahrain will be high-deg!”

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