McLaren has explained how the strive to minimise mistakes at pit stops led the side to give Lando Norris a contentious undercut in Formula 1’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
The Woking-based squad’s near misses came to an end at the Hungaroring as Oscar Piastri headed Norris to achieve the team’s first 1-2 finish since September 2021.
However, a team order saga clouded McLaren’s result as Norris waited until the third lap from the end to abide by his race engineer’s call to let his team-mate through.
Piastri took the lead when he made a stronger start than Norris and was managing proceedings until McLaren opted to pit the Briton earlier at the last round of stops.
Despite repeated instructions to swap the cars to their initial running order, Norris continued extending the gap until he slowed on Lap 68 to place Piastri into the lead.
But although Norris claimed the side could’ve avoided the situation, McLaren boss Andrea Stella has stressed that each decision was taken to preserve the 1-2 result.
The Italian has divulged the desire to ensure that the race win wasn’t squandered in the pit lane inspired the pit wall’s choice to box Norris two laps earlier than Piastri.
“We knew that by going first with Lando that could have been the situation, but we wouldn’t have done it if we weren’t sure that this would be fixed,” he divulged.
“I think today, because we are at the Hungaroring and because it was so hot, there were two variables that we really wanted to get right.
“The first one, we didn’t want to pit too early because the tyres were degrading a lot and we didn’t want to run out of tyres should Verstappen become a problem at the end of the race.
“And therefore, we just wanted to delay the pitstop as much as possible.
“And the second element is that you can have a problem at the pitstop, so you need to go safe from a pitstop point of view.
“Do you want to pit only when you have three seconds? Because then you know what happens that all the pressure goes on the pit crew.
“I don’t want in a race like today that the responsibility goes to the pit crew. I’d rather take the responsibility at the pit wall, secure the P1, P2 and then we manage the situation between the pit wall and the drivers because we talk about this situation and we know how we go about this situation.”
Stella has pointed out that Verstappen’s struggles to come through slower cars on newer rubber vindicated McLaren’s call to protect Norris from a potential undercut.
“I did not want to have a situation at the pitstop where there’s a problem with a nut, there’s a problem with the execution that puts us behind a Mercedes or a Ferrari,” he reiterated.
“We have seen with Verstappen today what can happen and Verstappen would have had the tyres much fresher than the guys ahead.
“So I think we would be talking something else if that was the case like it happened to Verstappen.
“So I know that for the media, I know that for watching on TV this becomes a story, but for us internally, this becomes part of the way we go racing and that’s why we invest so much in culture, in values, and in the mindset because we want to be able to manage this situation if we want to be in the championship with Lando, with Oscar, and with McLaren.”
McLaren elected to leave Piastri out an extra two laps once Norris stopped and Stella has clarified that the team was safeguarding the Australian against degradation.
Asked about the decision to leave Piastri out an extra lap, Stella responded: “Because his pace was still reasonable.
“And like I said, it goes back to making sure that the tyres don’t degrade at the end of the race.
“Now we see that the tyres were actually easier than we thought. But that was not a given.”
