Andrea Stella believes both Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris dealt with Max Verstappen’s spirited defence with similar levels of calculation.

With Verstappen holding the lead off the start, McLaren had to fight back past other cars to tackle the Dutch driver – only for the reigning World Champion to defend with all his might against both Piastri and Norris.

Andrea Stella: No difference in how McLaren drivers attacked Max Verstappen

Verstappen had run a little wide at Turn 1 while holding off Norris, with the British driver attempting to go around the outside of Verstappen into Turn 2 – a move that saw him having to take avoiding action as Verstappen’s car snapped with some oversteer.

This left Norris down in sixth and having to fight back past Alex Albon and the two Mercedes drivers, while Piastri – having cleared Kimi Antonelli – got into DRS range of Verstappen on Lap 5.

Verstappen hung gamely on through some robust defending as Piastri relentlessly attacked, with the overtake seemingly inevitable – the pass finally happened on Lap 14.

With Piastri now in the lead, their dicing had allowed Norris to close the gap and, immediately, the second McLaren began clambering all over the back of Verstappen.

Norris got the move done into Turn 11, steaming down the inside of Verstappen, but ran too wide on the exit. This meant he had to let the Dutch driver back past, but this merely delayed the inevitable as he overtook the Red Bull at the same point on the following lap.

Later, Norris said that Verstappen hadn’t been racing very smartly.

“[Max was] fighting hard. It’s up to him to do that,” he said of the four-time F1 World Champion, who finished in fourth after an unfortunately-timed Virtual Safety Car allowed George Russell to get ahead of him.

“He’s ruined his own race. He’s not racing very smart.”

With Piastri’s attack appeared to have been more calculated and decisive in the Australian’s approach as Norris required a few attempts to get past a Red Bull that very clearly didn’t have an answer to the MCL39’s pace, McLaren team boss Andrea Stella was asked whether he felt there had been a different level of clinicality from his two drivers, or whether it was down to differing understandings of the recently updated racing guidelines.

“I don’t think so,” Stella said.

“I think both drivers were approaching the overtaking in a way that had Lando not gone off by a few centimetres in Turn 11, he would have completed the overtaking in what was a similar time [to Piastri].

“So I don’t think we should over-read too much into situations. Like I said before, it’s a matter sometimes of a fraction of a second or a fraction of a metre, and the big time lost came because of having to give back the position.

“So I think, in terms of overtaking manoeuvre and precision and determination, I don’t see that there’s any difference between our two drivers.”

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Where Lando Norris could have approached Max Verstappen battle differently

Where Norris could have done things differently, Stella said, was in his approach to Turns 1 and 2, in that a more circumspect positioning of his car wouldn’t have made his life more difficult by falling down to sixth place.

“With the benefit of hindsight, let’s say that, considering the situation in Turns 1 and 2, it could have been better for Lando to just lift and make sure that he could keep the second position,” he explained.

“Because the car – again, with the benefit of hindsight – we see that it was very fast, and he would certainly have passed Max like Oscar, and then later, Lando was in condition to do.

“So, I think like every situation in racing, you have to approach with the mindset of reviewing where the opportunities lie. I think, in this case, Lando could have been a little bit more patient, but I quite like to see Lando aggressive, going for taking the lead in the race, and, sometimes, it’s just a matter of a fraction of a second.

“In this situation, the stewards elected that there was no need to intervene, but definitely, the manoeuvre was quite at the limit.

“So concerning the second overtaking, the race time was lost because we needed to give back the position. It was fair to give back the position because, on overtaking, we exceeded the track limits.

“So there’s a few things that we need to improve. Certainly, there are things to improve, even from Oscar’s side, like, if we look back at qualifying, I think Oscar lost a little bit of rhythm in qualifying from Q2 to Q3 so, even in that case, we have some opportunities.

“I think both drivers are very open to this kind of review, adapt, make adaptations, and go again.

“This is in isolation, but this is also to come to the point with the conversations the drivers have with the team of engineers, team principal, their own team support, and then you cash in all these in getting stronger and stronger event after event.”

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