Stella admits Piastri pit stop issue was ‘costly’ in Belgium as he identifies two factors that surprised McLaren

Andrea Stella has acknowledged that Oscar Piastri’s slow pit stop at the Belgian Grand Prix – with the Australian overrunning his marks – may have potentially been costly in preventing the McLaren driver from catching the Mercedes pair at the end of the race.

After enjoying a better start to the race than team mate Lando Norris, Piastri looked fast as the 44-lap encounter progressed, particularly when he found himself in clean air. However, his charge was slowed down somewhat when he pitted from the lead on Lap 31 and overshot his box, resulting in a stop of 4.4s.

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In the laps that followed, the McLaren hunted down Charles Leclerc ahead and was then just over half a second behind the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton at the chequered flag as he crossed the line in third, before being promoted to second later on when winner George Russell was disqualified.

Reflecting on the impact of Piastri’s slow stop after the race, Stella commented: “Oscar said immediately in the in-lap on the radio, ‘apologies for the pit stop’, because I think he realised that that would have been a bit costly, because potentially he would have just queued behind Hamilton but he could also have been in condition to attack.

“So I think this one-and-a-half/two-second loss at the pit stop ultimately proved to be relatively costly, and even because then he would have been behind Leclerc earlier with fresher tyres, which means he could have finalised the overtaking more easily.

“We do have to work with drivers in terms of, even in the hot moments, just don’t overcook it at the pit stop position, because it can be very costly. I think we had something similar in Silverstone as well.”

As for Norris, the Briton struggled to bounce back from an error at the start which saw him drop positions, and he ultimately ended the race in P6 after being unable to find a way past Max Verstappen in P5.

Pushed on whether it may have been worth trying a one-stop strategy for the out-of-position Norris – as Mercedes did with Russell – Stella answered: “Potentially. I need to review this one, I have to say, [I] potentially need to understand if Lando was in the right position to one-stop because if you extend it you tend to lose some positions on track.

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“For us the plan with Lando was robust, it’s just that we were a little surprised that we could not overtake. The other one where we were surprised – and this could also be to do with how good Verstappen is as a driver – he made the medium last in the final stint, like not many other drivers managed to do today.

“We were just expecting that his tyres would have fallen off and they didn’t, so we thought overtaking Verstappen would have been easy and it proved not to be the case. I’ll have to review whether with Lando it would have been a good idea just to follow what Russell did.”

It was also put to Stella whether Piastri could have managed to stop just once, to which the Team Principal admitted that there were two areas where the squad were taken by surprise over the weekend at Spa-Francorchamps.

“In terms of could we [have pitted Piastri once], yes, in hindsight,” Stella responded. “We considered that. We were not adamant that that was going to work. In case this kind of strategy doesn’t work, it can become very, very painful because then it’s too late to pit and therefore you may lose a lot of positions.

“I think for us, if anything, this one was pretty extreme, I think, in terms of considering this because if you commit to this and it doesn’t work, you will probably screw up a race day. With Oscar we thought we had strong pace and we were in condition to use a more conventional stop to cover positions.

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“I think the two factors that today were different from our initial expectations were the degradation of the tyres was lower than expected, but if anything and above all, overtaking was more difficult.

“That surprised us and when you had a bit of tyre advantage it was still not enough to overtake because, like we saw with Lewis and Russell, I don’t think the positions were frozen, that’s what I understood that simply with the effect of the dirty air it was just not possible to overtake as easily as we thought.

“I think in Russell’s position, there was potentially more motivation to take a risky approach. But for us we want to think slightly more robustly, and we see today we scored again higher than Red Bull. We’re now 43 points behind, I think we need to be a little cautious with adventurous strategies, which with hindsight today actually proved to be good.”

Stella was ultimately pleased to have come away from the event having cut into Red Bull’s lead in the constructors’ standings.

“Today with the little issue with Lando, Lap 1, the little issue at the pit stop, the reality is that nobody has a perfect event, it’s just impossible,” the Italian explained.

“I think we are actually quite satisfied with the level of consistency and robustness we have as a team, the only team where the drivers have scored points at every single event, mega reliability so far.

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“I’ve lost count of how many points in a row, maybe 10, 10 podiums in a row. So many opportunities to do better but the big picture is of a very strong and consistent team, and this should be remarked.

“Today in the way the race unfolded I think it’s still important that we gain points on Red Bull, because if you had told me before the race that you’re going to gain points on Red Bull, I’m not so sure because I was expecting Verstappen to come through, and if you see last year’s race Perez finished something like 10 seconds, 15 seconds from Verstappen for a one-two.

“So we gained eight points, 43 now behind. I take the positives, and we keep working on the opportunities.”