F1 | McLaren: no risky strategies to attack Verstappen

The Woking outfit emerged as Red Bull’s closest challengers at Imola, with its pace suggesting it had the potential to take pole position.

Despite his speed, his chances of victory against Verstappen were weakened somewhat by Oscar Piastri’s three-place grid penalty for impeding, which dropped him to fifth, but McLaren still clearly feel they are on the hunt. a victory.

Although a “medium-hard” one-stop strategy, on a track where overtaking is very complicated, offers few options for overtaking Verstappen in a direct head-to-head, this does not mean that there are no strategic options that could take it to head.

For example, he could risk starting on the soft tires to try to get in front of turn 1, or making an undercut at the first stop to take the lead. He may also delay the tire change as much as possible, in the hope of fitting fresher tires for the race to the checkered flag. Furthermore, Safety Cars could also offer other opportunities.

However, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella is clear: whatever he does in his quest for glory will not be a gamble.

When asked by Motorsport.com about McLaren’s mentality ahead of the race, Stella said: “We hope and would like to never find ourselves in the position of having to roll the dice. We try to make logical and strategic considerations to understand what the ‘best approach to maximize the result.”

“We have to say that the space to get to Turn 1 here is one of the longest of the season. So the grid position will not necessarily be the one, say, at the end of the first lap. We’ll see. In general, there are some strategic options because the Hard tires can last relatively long.”

“So, you can stop earlier, do a long run and try to work with the undercut. Or you can stop later, and then you might have to overtake someone, but with fresher tyres. There are different options. We’ll see But the most important thing is to have the pace to be able to use these options.”

Pirelli manager Mario Isola believes that the temperature could be decisive for the progress of the race: the colder it will be, the less powerful the undercut will be.

“If it’s hot, I don’t see any problem warming up hard and the undercut could be powerful,” he said. “But if the temperatures are much cooler, obviously the hard will have a bit of trouble warming up.”

Asked if he believes McLaren has the chance to gamble and do something unexpected, Isola replied: “It’s difficult to have a strategic option that completely changes the situation here. In other races we’ve had more variables and so it’s it was easier to invent something.”

“But in any case, I think they are all very close, with cars within a tenth of a second. And that means we will definitely see a lot of action during the race. We will have an interesting race despite the one pit stop.”

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

However, Isola doesn’t believe it’s worth risking the soft tires at the start for McLaren to try and jump ahead of Verstappen.

“If you want to take a risk and start on the soft just to jump in front of the first corner and try to maintain position,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s a big advantage. We know that the difference in terms of meters gained between the soft and medium tires is minimal, and then it also depends on the way the rider starts.”

“We know that Max is very good at every start, so I think that if you try to start on the soft tires to try to overtake at the beginning, and you don’t succeed, it can damage your race a bit. Personally, it’s not a which I would try.”

Also because McLaren does not want to plan its race thinking only of the clash with Verstappen, but also wants to observe what happens behind him.

“I still think Ferrari is very competitive,” Stella said. “Some lap times, particularly the one Leclerc set in free practice in his long run, were really impressive compared to ours.”

“So if those lap times materialise, we won’t just have to look at Verstappen. We will definitely have to think about the Ferraris too,” he concluded.