At the end of Friday’s dry day, everything seemed to be headed towards a potential McLaren one-two, with rain being the only real big unknown that could ruin Woking’s plans. It’s no mystery that, together with Red Bull, the MCL38 had something more than its rivals, also given the problems encountered by Mercedes, who only managed to change the face of the W15 during the night between Friday and Saturday, laying the foundations for the victory that then came on Sunday.
It was the weekend when McLaren should have recovered points on Red Bull and Max Verstappen given the Dutchman’s grid penalty. However, even on this occasion, it was only half done. Although the British team did manage to close the gap in the constructors’ standings, on the contrary Lando Norris finds himself leaving Belgium with an even wider gap than the one he had with when he arrived in Spa.
An opportunity that leaves several regrets, albeit contrasting, because the chase of the two MCL38s became complicated in two different moments. The first was without a shadow of a doubt the qualification, with McLaren not going beyond fourth and fifth place, while the second was the start, where Lando Norris was the author of a mistake, which he himself defined as “silly”, thus losing a further three positions. If before the race one could expect a McLaren potentially capable of fighting for the victory, on the other hand some elements weighed significantly on the possibilities of a comeback.
Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
The first stint was probably the most tactical of the race, less indicative of the value of the cars on the field in absolute terms, but fundamental in terms of getting rid of a delicate tyre while waiting to move on to the hards, more robust and flexible compounds not only in terms of thermal degradation, but also in terms of resistance to graining. Compared to what was forecast on Friday, which indicated a high degradation, so much so as to push Pirelli to almost completely rule out the single stop among the alternatives, the track told a different story.
Since Norris’s mistake at the start changed the cards on the table, McLaren, who expected a high consumption of the tires, also tried to react by changing their tactics. From responding to their rivals, including Max Verstappen who completed the undercut on the British driver, stopping after ten laps, the Woking team instead chose to extend their lead, completing 4/5 more laps than their rivals. Their idea, in fact, was that with a hot and aggressive asphalt on the tires, even just 4 or 5 more laps, which at Spa have a different specific weight compared to other tracks due to the longer track, would have really made the difference.
“When we pulled away in the first stint with Lando, we were definitely more optimistic that, having pulled away by five laps compared to other cars, we could take advantage with a better pace in a later phase. But in reality, with the low degradation and the difficulties in overtaking, we didn’t manage to do it and this started to be a bit of a symptom that perhaps things didn’t go as expected,” commented Andrea Stella, underlining how the unexpected circumstances encountered during the race weighed more than one might have expected.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20, Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
While it is true that the hard proved to be a good tyre already during the first stint with Sainz, the only one among the first to have chosen that compound, in reality it was only in the second part of the race that the engineers understood the validity of the harder tyre. In the first part of the race, the pace was almost controlled and to this was added a certain evolution of the asphalt, especially keeping in mind that the track had been “cleaned” by the rain that had fallen the previous day.
All elements that made the hard a compound not only with a less marked degradation than expected, but also more effective than hypothesized, so much so as to push some teams in the second stint towards a single stop, as in the case of Russell, but also of the two Aston Martins. This aspect took several teams by surprise because, if at the beginning it was expected that the high degradation would also facilitate overtaking, just as McLaren hoped, the more the race went towards the final phase, the more complicated the attack maneuvers became.
On the other hand, however, Stella also wanted to highlight Verstappen’s skill during the last stint, the one in which he managed the medium tyre, the one that the teams wanted to avoid given its fragility. Red Bull had been the only top team on Friday to use the hard in FP1: a choice that then put them on the back foot, because they found themselves with two mediums in view of the race.
Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
During the final part of the race, Norris came close to overtaking Verstappen on several occasions, even when the latter did not have DRS available, but he never managed to have that little bit extra to complete the maneuver. Undoubtedly, having Leclerc’s slipstream at the end helped to defend the position but, on the other hand, it is also worth highlighting the excellent work of the Red Bull driver in preparing the exit of turn 1, the most delicate section to gain those few meters useful to defend on the Kemmel straight.
“We were a bit surprised by the difficulty in completing overtaking moves. The other thing that surprised us, and that could also have something to do with Verstappen’s skill as a driver, is that Max made the mediums last in the last stint. We expected the tyres to drop more, but that wasn’t the case. We thought that overtaking Verstappen would be easy, but it wasn’t,” Stella added.
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