McLaren will Review if Free-To-Race Philosophy Costs Chance to Catch Verstappen
· Yahoo Sports
Andrea Stella says McLaren F1 will review if the in-fight between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in Italian GP disallowed him to catch Max Verstappen.
It was a fight fest at the F1 Italian GP at Monza all around. The McLaren pair were at different sports early in the race when Piastri was going back and forth with Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton for the podium position, while Norris was in the fight with Alpine’s Pierre Gasly at the fag end of the Top 10.
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What happened in the race
Their battle continued even till the end but Piastri got the better of Hamilton and Norris cleared Gasly to take track position. The duo had Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in their sights in the battle for third after Mercedes pair of Andrea Kimi Antonelli and George Russell streamed ahead.
But Piastri was stuck behind Verstappen for long, which allowed Norris to catch the pair after clearing Hamilton. The Brit’s push and McLaren’s philosophy of ‘let them race’ dropped the Australian away from the Dutchman in the last few laps of F1 Italian GP.
Norris pushed Piastri to get by but it was unrelenting. They also had a moment where the Brit complained that he was pushed off, but it was cleared by the stewards. The reigning F1 world champion finally got through him on the last lap to secure fourth as the Australian had to be content with fifth.
Norris, Piastri after the race plus Stella on let principles
Post-race, Norris was fine with Piastri’s defence, had no complaints about the tactics. At the same time, Piastri explained that he wanted to let him through and catch him by the end, but his play didn’t work out. In all this fighting, they let Verstappen off the hook, which Stella said they will review.
He stood by the principle of ‘let them race’, but felt if that allowed Verstappen to run away. Since McLaren had pace deficit on the straights, they needed a faster car ahead of them to stay behind him. That’s how Piastri managed to stay behind the Dutchman for long.
But since he got into defence mode it allowed Verstappen to eke out a safe gap. Stella acknowledged that there will be review to understand what they could have done better. The Italian also explained how difficult it is to stick to the formula, even with experience at hand.
Let them race philosophy undone podium chase?
Stella: “I think in this situation we thought that for Lando to be able to have a chance on Monza, he should firstly be able to pass Oscar. So the two cars were on the same tyres, same time of day, 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 hook that you have this year when you lose the slipstream here in Monza and you have to use the energy to defend against someone else.
“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 with the heat of the moment. So I think it’s something that certainly we will review and in the context of this kind of racing, because I think you are right in highlighting that 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 and the people and we thought that it was more important to let them race according to our philosophy.”
How difficult to handle such situation even now?
Stella: “You raise a very difficult matter, even if we come from the experience of 2024, 2025, even if in 2025 we achieve both championships with an approach to racing which was based on some important principles, equality, let them race, fairness, in reality it’s always difficult to translate these principles into real racing. Like if you see today we took again an approach which is on the risky side, we let them race and we ended up with one car having the wheels on the grass, something that we would never do.
“It’s very difficult because you know I take the case today for us, you ask them not to race each other, Lando finishes fifth and you may say but for fairness I would have liked to have my opportunities. So it’s a tricky matter, I mean for us in our approach it’s important that we go united with the drivers, I mean it’s difficult for a team to say this is what we impose, now you guys are up, you always want to make sure that this process is also going to get the evolution from all the parties.
“But as soon as you see that the team interest is under attack or is in danger then you might have to have a game and start to be strict from a team point of view, these are the foundation of how we approach it, we will have to definitely have some conversation internally like there will be conversations at Mercedes and there will be conversations at Ferrari, certainly Lewis has been very vocal on this matter and I’m sure this is something that they will be considering at the right time.”
Norris says Piastri move was fine
“No, it was okay. I think I shouldn’t review things, but I think it’s just the perception of when you’re in the car when someone’s kind of opening the gap a bit and then kind of go straight. You get that perception when you’re going at 200 miles an hour. That’s all, but I think what he did was fair. So it’s just when you’re in the moment and you’re half on the grass, you realize how quickly things can end pretty badly, you know? So just in the heat of the moment, but no from that side it was fine and it was a good battle. A good result from a tough race.”
Allowed Norris through but couldn’t catch him back
“Yeah, I mean it was a good battle. It was a lot of back and forth and the last lap, you never really know what to do with the energy and I think we went for different strategies with that and he got past and I thought I’d have a chance to get back past again, but ultimately I just didn’t quite get there, so yeah, it’s always a bit of a gamble with these cars but yeah, I definitely know for next time what I would do differently.”