Andrea Stella: Red Bull’s tires don’t wear out that much

Like most other teams in Sao Paulo, McLaren had problems with increased tire wear, albeit to a lesser extent than Ferrari and Mercedes. The head of the British team, Andrea Stella, believes that it was because of the tires that Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri could not force Red Bull Racing to fight for victory in the race.

Andrea Stella: “The main difference between us and Red Bull was the lap times on worn tires. We have seen that with the new kits we can fight with them for position. However, when the tires started to deteriorate, Max drove away from us. Apparently the tires on the Red Bull car don’t wear out that much.

The tire degradation was about one to two tenths every two laps, which is a lot. If you can reduce the wear and tear, it will give a noticeable advantage after ten laps. I think Red Bull is doing a fantastic job with the tyres.

We understand why we are losing so much, but we can’t do anything with this year’s car. The new products presented on the podium in Singapore improved the performance of the tires, but not enough to compete for first place, especially on high degradation circuits. But we see that other teams, such as Mercedes and Ferrari, have very bad tires.”