Stella: The results do not yet reflect the capabilities of MCL38

Commenting on the results of the first Friday practice session in Suzuka, McLaren chief Andrea Stella also spoke in an extremely diplomatic manner about the reasons for the personnel changes in the team’s technical department.

Andrea Stella: “Training on such a beautiful track like Suzuka is always interesting and today it was briefly interrupted by red flags. But we calmly acted according to our plan, checked the settings and compared the performance of the rear wings, because in our two cars they were adapted to different angles of attack. After all, it is always important to find the right compromise between grip in corners and maximum speed on the straights.

The first impression of the rubber performance is this: the level of degradation is very high. This also applies to Medium tires, which also lose efficiency quite quickly. I predict that the race will be held with at least two pit stops and that the teams will mainly rely on Medium and Hard tires. But in general we can say that everything is going well. When we talk about working on speed, red flags appeared on the track right when we put soft tires on the cars.

Therefore we had to go out on the tires already rolled in, and on this track with such tires it is extremely difficult to show a good time. I believe that our results so far do not reflect the capabilities of our car in one fast lap (Oscar Piastri was 8th, Lando Norris – 10th).

But in the first training, the most important thing is to fully implement the planned program, determine the direction of work on the settings and analyze the behavior of the tires.

We hope that our drivers will demonstrate the full speed potential of the MCL38 during qualifying tomorrow.”

Stella was also asked to explain why David Sanchez left McLaren just three months after being appointed technical director for car concept and development.

“Changes in Formula 1 happen very quickly,” the team manager from Woking began from a distance. – We always try to maximize the efficiency of the entire organization, so together with David we looked at the situation both from the point of view of the optimal configuration of the technical department and taking into account his personal interests.

I believe that since he returned from Ferrari to McLaren, the overall context has changed somewhat, and together with him we decided that he deserves a higher position in which David could fully demonstrate all his qualities – probably in one way or another – or another team. We certainly wish him the best for the future, but we are very happy with where our technical department looks now.”