Why McLaren let Norris and Piastri race at Monza

On Saturday evening at Monza, McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella was adamant that poor execution was the root cause of a disappointing Q3 outcome that saw Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris start in P6 and P8.

After Sunday’s hectic race saw them move up to P4 and P5 – with Norris ahead this time – the Italian acknowledged a much better overall performance, and pretty much the optimum that the team could have expected given the weakness of the MCL40 package on the straights.

It was also a race where Norris and Piastri were allowed to race without intervention, giving fans a second battle to watch in the closing laps along with that between the Mercedes drivers for the lead.

“I think this is a race in which we executed racing better than what we did yesterday,” said Stella.

“Yesterday in Qualifying we should have qualified certainly better than a P6/P8 on the grid. And we reviewed that with the team and with the drivers, and we said to ourselves that today, from an execution point of view, we should have done better and operated higher standards.

“I think overall, we did. We paid a bit of price of the position on the grid... it is not easy to get an overtake completed and move on – like if we see how much it took for Lando to pass [Pierre] Gasly, and then start to close the gap to the cars ahead.

“We see that there's certainly been quite a lot of entertainment today, but to some extent there were also some issues for a quicker car to be able to compete, if you don't start at the front of the grid. Very, very busy [for] everyone, drivers and engineers, with managing the power unit and the battery in a circuit like Monza.”

The battle between Piastri and Norris provided great entertainment, and there was a logical reason behind the team allowing it to run its course, giving both drivers a fair chance.

Norris may have been keen to get by and attempt to catch Max Verstappen up ahead, but the team felt he had to earn the right to do so.

“I think in this situation, we thought that for Lando to be able to have a chance on Max, he should firstly be able to pass Oscar,” continued Stella. “And the two cars were on the same tyres, same tyre age, same car. So we thought there was no need to interfere with the normal development of the race. We let them race.

“We think that was the right thing to do. I think overall Max was faster, he was just caught in this loop that you have when you lose the slipstream here in Monza, and you have to use the energy to defend from someone else.”

At one late stage Norris flagged a move that he didn’t like, although after the race he acknowledged that Piastri hadn’t done anything wrong. Stella concurred with that view.

“The moment in which Lando put the wheels on the grass, he came on the radio, he made a comment like he pushed me off or something. But actually, when we reviewed it, I think we saw that the episode is much more benign than what it might have looked in the heat of the moment.

“So I think it's something that certainly we will review, and we will review in the context of this kind of racing. As soon as you fight with each other, then you may lose time. So was there a better way for McLaren to give a fight to Verstappen? We will review. It wasn't obvious to us on the pit wall, and we thought that it was more important to let them race according to our philosophy of going racing.”

A positive aspect of the weekend was that Piastri was back in the fight after some difficult races, and it’s worth remembering that he was P3 in Qualifying before his impeding penalty was applied.

"I think it's a race that confirms a trajectory with Oscar,” said Stella. “We've had a couple of races in which we saw that for the requirements of this year's car, especially in the race when the car slides, we needed to make some adaptations to his natural driving style.

“We kind of adopted the same approach that we used with Lando last year, and we saw pretty rapidly some developments. We were happy to see how competitive Oscar was in Zandvoort in Qualifying trim. We said we need to do a little bit more for the race trim, we put in some work. And it's good that this work seems like it's been useful here in Monza.”

Attention now turns to Madrid and the rest of the season. The obvious question is where might the MCL40 repeat the sort of winning form that it demonstrated at the Hungaroring and the Netherlands?

“I think our tracks will be more the likes of Malaysia, Austin, Brazil,” said Stella. “I think where we have some long corners, the car seems to express its potential well. We have some new upgrades that we will take to Baku, but we still think that tracks like Baku and Madrid, where you have to be very precise with the trajectory, short corners, maybe they don't play to the best of our car.

“In Zandvoort and Hungary we were in position to win races, and here, while we were not, we know that it's a special race. Drag will be less important in Madrid.

“But from a championship point of view, I think we have to remain very realistic – don't get conditioned by looking at the classification, just focus on one race at a time.”