With Oscar Piastri and Rand Norris in a very close alignment with the race and race, McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella is focusing on providing his drivers with the means by which his team can solve this year’s driver’s championship battle through excellent points of excellent points on each race weekend.
Piastri passed Norris at the start of the race to win the Belgian Grand Prix, taking advantage of a slight wheel spin spell from his teammates to slipstream in the past on the Kemmel straights. Stella says the margin splitting the two will be the most detailed when Piastri scores the penalty behind the safety car as Norris won the previous race at Silverstone.
“There’s little, little between our two drivers,” Stella said. “This is because the two drivers race at such a high level. At McLaren, we are lucky to have two drivers fighting for the World Championship, of course.
“I think the difference comes from accuracy, accuracy and quality of execution. At Silverstone, the Oscar sports issues were at the expense of races during the safety car reboot and the resulting penalty, the finish line.
“So I think this execution makes the main difference. As a team, we try to make sure that, from a reliability perspective, from a team’s control perspective, and as a team, we are as good as possible to determine our outcome from a driver’s competition for a world championship for the driver.”
While many post-race focuses on the small mistakes made in pursuit of Norris’ piastry, Stella says she also acknowledges the standard for performance by the Australians at Spa.
“It’s very, very, very, very high quality,” he said. “Like I said before, we have two drivers, and I think Rand and Oscar are operating at that level, to the standard that even in my career, are approaching (and racing) multiple world champions.
“Oscar, the only (issue) he had, if any, was qualifying when his lap wasn’t perfect. At the same time, after the sprint, he said, “Yeah, I’m the pole position after the grate of the sprint, but that might not be a pole position. Q3.’
“I think Oscar could have controlled the deterioration even in the long run with medium tires. In fact, if he wasn’t wrong in the end, it means he ultimately controlled his time to the mirror and the land.
“So, the overall hat to Oscar, the excellent drive by Rand, as well, our reward was McLaren’s P1, P2. This is especially important. I think we’re performing at this level with these traits because it has performance and technical points, as it’s a circuit we’ve struggled with over the past few years.
