04/08/2025
NEWS STORY
"We didn't think necessarily that the one-stop was possible," admits Andrea Stella as Oscar Piastri admits it was a gamble.
Despite fluffing his start which saw him drop to fifth, a bold drive by Lando Norris, which saw the Briton adopt a one-stop strategy, sees him head into the summer break just 9 points adrift of his McLaren teammate.
"Our baseline strategy today was a two-stop strategy, we didn't think necessarily that the one-stop was possible," team boss Andrea Stella told reporters at race end.
"With Oscar we tried to go on a good, deterministic two-stop strategy, trying to pass Leclerc in the first stop," the Italian explained. "Then we tried to extend in the second stop to have a tyre delta, in order to have those few tenths of a second to be able to pass Leclerc, and this did work.
"When it comes to Lando and the one-stop strategy, when we extended, leaving Lando out, we didn't think that the one-stop would have been possible still," he admitted. "But credit to Lando, he managed to put together some very strong sectors and lap times, with tyres that were relatively used. So we somehow convinced ourselves that the one-stop was starting to get in the game, as we progressed with the first stage.
"It wasn't like entering the race with a one or a two-stop," he added. "We thought that the two-stop would be the dominant strategy."
"In terms of the two-stop for Oscar and the stopping time, is that also his tyres were starting to suffer a little bit in the first stint," he continued. "It wasn't clear what the power of the undercut would have been, but it was worth a try. And even extending when you have tyres that don't behave very well, not necessarily will make the extension something that will reward you.
"So we wanted to give a first go, and trying to pass Leclerc, we knew that there would have been a second go later on in the race, and at the time, definitely the one-stop for Lando was outside of any card, because like I said before, is an option from a strategic point of view, that we discovered while we were staying out with Lando, and we saw that he was in condition to put together some competitive advantage."
Asked if Piastri might have been better positioned to challenge his teammate if he had made his second stop earlier, Stella said: "We wanted to give Oscar enough of a tyre delta to pass Leclerc, but also to have a fair chance on Lando, because that would have meant being on an optimal two-stop.
"So we wanted to make sure that, thinking about Leclerc, we were not deviating too much of an optimal two-stop, because that would have been unfair to Oscar in relation to his competition with Lando, which was fairer, and we also checked with Oscar what his preference was. He certainly wanted to have an opportunity to win the race, and we thought that with enough tyre delta to Leclerc, Oscar would have had a chance in Lando.
"So I think that the race unfolded pretty much as we hoped it would unfold in terms of tyre behaviour, which means tyres that lasted enough for us to stop when we decided to pit Lando out, and also, in the second stint, tyres and car pace that would have allowed Oscar to pass Leclerc, and then actually the two strategies proved to be quite equivalent."
"Whenever you lose a race by such a little amount, it's obviously a bit painful," admitted the Australian, "but I'm sure it was entertaining from the outside.
"It was entertaining from the inside as well," he laughed. "So, a pretty fun race, all things considered.
"When you're on the losing side of that battle, it's a little bit difficult," he admitted. "We tried our best, I think, and we got ahead of Charles. I don't know what happened to him in the last stint, but some things to look back on, whether we should have done something a bit different in terms of strategy, but very easy to say in hindsight.
"I knew it was going to be still incredibly tough because getting close to the car ahead is one thing, but trying to overtake is a completely different story. I knew that I was catching him a lot when I had clean air, but as soon as I got close, it was incredibly tough to stay close enough.
"There are so many corners in the middle sector that in some cases it almost feels like you do a better job in some corners, and then you pay the price at the next one because you're even closer. That made it very tough. And then with such long corners to end the lap, it just kills any downforce you've got. Even if I had more laps, I'm not sure the result would have been any different, but I certainly tried.
"I think we had to try and do something to beat Leclerc because it wasn't obvious that we just had enough pace to blow past him and go and win that way," said the Australian. "We tried something. Was it the right thing in the end? I don't know, but it's always much easier when you're the car behind to take that risk.
"For Lando, there was virtually nothing to lose by trying a one-stop race. For myself, potentially there was. We'll look back and see if there was anything we should have done differently. But a two-stop was always the plan before the race, so it wasn't even really discussed that much about doing a one-stop. So, it was certainly a gamble."
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