McLaren will reflect on why it struggled to perform compared to Lando Norris during the American Grand Prix, as championship leader Oscar Piastri’s advantage has narrowed to 14 points.
Norris secured a front-row spot and showed race pace to match winner Max Verstappen in key sections of the race, but remained in second place after a long battle with Charles Leclerc. In contrast, Piastri qualified sixth and finished fifth, with his fastest lap nearly a second slower than Norris, but team principal Andrea Stella admitted it was not Australia’s strongest weekend.
“This is certainly one of the most important points for us to review. That is the fact that Oscar seemed to have had tenths of a second in qualifying and in the race that were completely unnoticeable, and perhaps that was available in the car,” Stella said.
“We are currently making sure that we are completely happy with the car set-up, the floor set-up and that everything is as intended from a car perspective.
“At the same time, we’re going to look at the driving as well. I think Oscar knows that in those conditions where the grip is low, you need to really challenge the car by leaning into understeer, oversteer and lock. This is an area where there is room for improvement in his driving, and by Oscar’s standards this means he will improve pretty quickly than we can.”
“I think we got quite a bit more information today on top of what we got yesterday. We were already talking with Oscar[before the race]about what we can do to get more information out. So I think this is just data to learn from, and Oscar will learn very quickly.”
Stella believes a lack of data from the sprint when both drivers crashed may have caused McLaren to drive the car slightly too fast, leaving some performance behind.
“It’s about vehicle height and the lack of standards to really make the most of what is allowed,” he said. “And a track like COTA, where we’ve passed some teams in the past, is one of those tracks where it’s very difficult to judge the last millimeter without having reference from actual running.
“Simulations only allow you to go to a certain point. You need tracking data to actually go to the last millimeter.”