McLaren boss Andrea Stella explained the team had to wait for the right moment to swap Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris in the Formula 1 Sprint at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix.
Piastri lined up on pole, ahead of Norris, but the Australian late revealed after the latter’s Sprint victory that a swap was pre-arranged.
Norris wasn’t “proud” to win amid team orders, but he did get frustrated mid-Sprint as he circled Interlagos behind Piastri.
McLaren eventually made the swap on Lap 22, just before a Virtual Safety Car was deployed.
“We knew that we wanted to swap,” Stella told Motorsport.com.
“But we were waiting for the right gap behind Lando, because if you swap and the other car gets in the DRS, we may compromise one of the principles, which is maximum result for the team.
“So, we were observing, and we were ideally waiting for a couple of seconds [gap], but repeated for a couple of laps.”
Safety Car risk prompted McLaren swap
The two McLarens were pursued by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Norris’ title rival Max Verstappen for the majority of the Sprint.
When Verstappen passed Leclerc late on, the pressure ramped up on McLaren and when Nico Hulkenberg’s Haas pulled up alongside the circuit, Stella knew the team had to act.
“The gaps in the sectors were moving around a bit, and I wasn’t completely comfortable to expose Oscar to Leclerc, because, at some stage, Leclerc didn’t seem slow at all at the start of the race,” he explained.
“Even the time the two seconds appeared, the next lap, it was 1.2 seconds. We were waiting for the right opportunity.
“We didn’t want to get excited and then create a situation that doesn’t maximise the result for the team. We knew that we had time to do that, unless there was a risk of a safety car.
“And as soon as we saw the risk of a safety car towards the end of the race, then we needed to accelerate the process.”
READ MORE – Lando Norris ‘not proud’ to win Brazil F1 Sprint amid McLaren team orders
