Stella: Within moments we were not acting as we should

After the finish of the British Grand Prix, Andrea Stella admitted that not all the decisions he and the McLaren team made during the British Grand Prix were correct.

Andrea Stella: “The race took place in difficult conditions that were constantly changing and many decisions had to be made. Many of them turned out to be right, but there were also a few moments where we had to act differently than we did. But we understand this now.

I think we have to admit that we lost a lot of time by leaving Oscar Piastri on the track for another lap. He should have changed to intermediate tyres earlier, but we wanted to avoid the delay that comes with a double pit stop. However, it has now become clear that it was necessary to invite both drivers to the pits at the same time.

And the second wrong decision is due to the fact that Lando Norris’ car should have been equipped with Medium tyres at the second pit stop, but at that moment we didn’t want our pace to be worse than Lewis Hamilton’s, so he switched to Soft tyres.

But now I think it would be more correct to put Medium, and then we would be more competitive, even if Lewis was ahead of us after his pit stop. On these tyres the car would have behaved more stable at the end of the race.

I repeat: we all understand this now, after the finish of the race, but this gives us the opportunity to learn a useful lesson, so that the team continues to develop and improve. It is still nice that one McLaren driver was on the podium at Silverstone, and the other in 4th place, because we earned a lot of points. This is important for both championship events and I want to thank all McLaren employees, because only thanks to them this was possible.

Overall the results of the day are mixed, with a touch of bitterness, because we could have won this race, but there were also many positives, and we will use this experience in preparing for the next races.