23/07/2024
NEWS STORY
Andrea Stella has defended his team's strategy in Hungary, insisting that maintaining the 1-2 was the only priority.
What should have been a joyous occasion for the Woking team as it celebrated a maiden win for its new talent and its first 1-2 since Monza 2021, was somewhat marred by the oh so public radio exchanges with Lando Norris in a bid to have him hand the lead back to his teammate.
Contrary to the usual strategy, the Woking outfit opted to pit Norris ahead of his teammate, who was leading at the time, advising Piastri that this was in order to cover Lewis Hamilton.
"Best pace, don't worry about Lando," Piastri was told by his engineer Tom Stallard.
After Piastri finally pitted, rejoining the race behind his teammate, Norris was told: "Oscar has just pitted. He'll likely come out just behind you. We'd like to re-establish the order at your convenience."
In fact, Norris actually began to extend his lead, as Piastri was told: "Okay Oscar, once you get to Lando we will swap the position. But we want to avoid Lando having to give up a lot of race time."
"We need you to save tyres, and we want to let Oscar through," Norris was subsequently told. "Well you should have boxed him first then, surely?" he replied. "Doesn't matter," said his engineer Will Joseph. "It does. For me, maybe," responded Norris.
"OK Lando, ten laps to go. We think both cars are using tyres too much. Just remember every Sunday morning meeting we have," Norris is urged. "Yep, tell him to catch up then please," comes the reply.
On Lap 64, just 6 from the chequered flag, Norris is told: "Lando, he can't catch you up. You've proved your point and it really doesn't matter."
"He's on much quicker tyres," says Norris. "I mean, I would have tried to undercut anyway, if I didn't I would have gotten..."
"We did this stop sequence for the good of the team," he is told.
"Yeah and I'm fighting for this championship!"
"I'm trying to protect you, mate. I'm trying to protect you," urges Joseph, who subsequently adds: "Lando there are five laps to go. The way to win a championship is not by yourself. You're going to need Oscar and you're going to need the team."
"The longer we leave this, the riskier it gets," suggests Piastri on Lap 67. "Don't worry Oscar, we're managing it," he is told.
Meanwhile, another plea to Norris: "If there's a safety car now, it makes this very awkward. Please do it now."
The Briton subsequently yields. "Yeah you don't need to say anything," he says.
Whatever way one looks at it, for all at Woking the Champagne will have tasted a little sour, leaving Norris looking like an entitled brat and not a team player, whilst the media sense a new angle for the remainder of the season, a driver feud at McLaren.
After months of Zak Brown opining about the toxicity at Red Bull, the media is going to be making hay at the potential situation in Woking.
While Norris claims he lost the race at the start, he believes the subsequent drama could have been avoided.
"I was put in this situation, and it's not my fault," he said at race end. "I was leading the race in a way. Simply, the team should have just boxed Oscar first, and we wouldn't even be having this discussion. So it's not that.
"I think as a team we could have done things slightly differently, and I'm sure we'll talk about it. I got put into the lead rather than wanting to. I feel like we made things way too hard for ourselves and way too tricky for ourselves. We should have just boxed Oscar first and things would have been simple. They gave me the lead, and I gave it back."
"We knew that by going first with Lando that could have been the situation," explained Stella, "but we wouldn't have done it if we weren't sure that this would be fixed.
"Because we are at the Hungaroring and because it was so hot, there were two variables that we really wanted to get right. The first one, we didn't want to pit too early because the tyres were degrading a lot and we didn't want to run out of tyres should Verstappen become a problem at the end of the race. And therefore, we just wanted to delay the pitstop as much as possible.
"And the second element is that you can have a problem at the pit stop, so you need to go safe from a pitstop point of view. Do you want to pit only when you have three seconds? Because then you know what happens that all the pressure goes on the pit crew.
"I don't want in a race like today that the responsibility goes to the pit crew. I'd rather take the responsibility at the pit wall, secure the P1, P2 and then we manage the situation between the pit wall and the drivers because we talk about this situation and we know how we go about this situation.
"I did not want to have a situation at the pit stop where there's a problem with a nut, there's a problem with the execution that puts us behind a Mercedes or a Ferrari," he continued.
"We have seen with Verstappen today what can happen," he added, referring to the Duthman's problem passing slower cars despite being on fresh rubber, "and Verstappen would have had the tyres much fresher than the guys ahead. So I think we would be talking something else if that was the case like it happened to Verstappen.
"I know that for the media, I know that for watching on TV this becomes a story," he continued, "but for us internally, this becomes part of the way we go racing and that's why we invest so much in culture, in values, and in the mind-set because we want to be able to manage this situation if we want to be in the championship with Lando, with Oscar, and with McLaren."
Asked why - once again - Piastri was left out for an extra lap, he replied: "Because his pace was still reasonable. Like I said, it goes back to making sure that the tyres don't degrade at the end of the race. Now we see that the tyres were actually easier than we thought. But that was not a given."
Check out our Sunday gallery from the Hungaroring here.