Andrea Stella: I appreciate Lando’s actions

After the finish of the Spanish Grand Prix, where Lando Norris took second place, Andrea Stella, the head of the McLaren team, praised both his driver and the strategists who had developed effective tactics.

Andrea Stella: “The victory was lost in the first corner. It is not surprising that in Barcelona you lose if you start from pole position, because there is a very long straight leading to the first corner. Rivals use slipstream and by the time you approach the braking zone the situation escalates somewhat.

I actually appreciate Lando’s actions because he managed to stay out of trouble. We wanted to finish the race knowing we had a good pace. We also chose the right tactics and I would especially like to praise our strategists, who have thought everything through very carefully.

We understood that it was impossible to make a pit stop too early, otherwise the tire life would not be sufficient. Today we did exactly the same and a later pit stop allowed us to close the gap to Max, but in the end we came just a little short to really fight for the win.

I think the McLaren and Red Bull cars are very close in terms of speed. In Canada our results in qualifying differed by a few thousandths of a second, and on this track it was the same, and in the race we saw the same picture. This is a very important achievement for McLaren because we can already say that we have reached Red Bull’s level, but we intend to continue improving our car.”