Spanish GP – McLaren, Stella: “Lost in turn-1, close to Red Bull”

by VALERIO BARRETTA

McLaren, who confirms at Montmeló

When you are disappointed with a second place, it means you are building a winning mentality. This is the last step missing McLaren, which now has the car and the driver to fight against Red Bull: all that is needed is that pinch of malice and clarity in the various phases of the grand prix to optimize performance and transform second places into victories. Which in the end is the biggest step of all.

Stella’s words

The team principal Andrea Star he is convinced that the MCL38 is now at the level of the RB20, and that today’s victory vanished not due to the strategy (with pit stops that were very late compared to Max Verstappen) but rather due to the bad start of Lando Norris, who lost the position against the world champion and George Russell: “Victory eluded us at the first corner. In Barcelona it is no surprise to lose from pole position because the road is long until the first corner“, commented the team principal to the microphones of Sky Sports UK. “I appreciate the fact that Lando stayed out of trouble, we wanted to finish the race. We knew the rhythm was strong“.

“The strategy was good. I want to praise the guys who prepared it very carefully. We knew that here we shouldn’t pit too early, otherwise we’d run out of tyres“, he continued. “In the end, we were unable to fight for the victory, but I think we are very, very close. It’s a great result for McLaren to talk about being on par with Red Bull, but we want to improve the car“.

Brown’s words

“We thought we could win the race and Lando is disappointed that he missed out on the win. But he did an incredible job, so I’m not going to sit here and berate him because he didn’t have a perfect start“, added CEO Zak Brown. “The team did a great job, the car was very fast and Lando drove incredibly well. Overall, if both cars finish in the points and one goes on the podium, how can you be disappointed? We gained on Ferrari and Mercedes, if Perez doesn’t increase the pace we can do it on Red Bull too. We all thought the championship was over after the first weekend, we were all wrong“.

…