Stella denies McLaren have slipped back: We were on a par with Ferrari and Red Bull

Ferrari’s upgrades in Austin lived up to expectations and delivered the improvement the Scuderia had been seeking. McLaren also brought a major upgrade to America and is expected to continue introducing new parts over the coming weeks, but the reigning champions left Texas as the fourth-fastest team. According to team principal Andrea Stella, however, appearances are deceptive.

Things began to unravel for McLaren in Saturday’s qualifying session. Afterwards, Lando Norris was furious with himself, insisting he could have qualified second. The reigning champion also showed flashes of impressive speed on Sunday. His pace on the hard tyres was particularly strong, but he had to make one set last 40 laps, which proved a little too much.

Despite everything, team principal Andrea Stella was encouraged by what he saw in Sunday’s race. “I think in the race we saw that what we said could have been the potential of the car was actually realised,” said the Italian engineer.

“Yesterday [in Qualifying], we thought that we had a faster car than we actually were able to realise on track. Lando said that the car could have been good for P2. I think that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, because even if the potential was there, this year somehow is very difficult to use the full potential,” Stella continued.

“It gets a little bit easier in the race, because you don’t push as much as you do in Qualifying. You necessarily leave a little bit of margin, and the car was, I think, today as competitive as the Ferraris and Red Bull, while [Kimi] Antonelli seemed to be a step ahead of everyone else,” the McLaren boss added.

While Lando was berating himself over his performance, his team-mate Oscar Piastri was once again distinctly underwhelming. Although Stella believes his team could have finished on the podium, that certainly does not apply to its second driver. Piastri has been slipping further back since the regulation change and urgently needs to find answers with his engineers, otherwise 2025 will be regarded as his only opportunity to win the title.

McLaren therefore focused on keeping Russell behind Piastri on Sunday, while taking a gamble with Norris by leaving him out to finish the race on hard tyres, hoping that his Mercedes power unit would help him fend off Verstappen and Leclerc in the battle for second place. The risky strategy ultimately failed to pay off, and Lando dropped to fifth.

“For the one-stop, this gives you the possibility to take advantage of a Safety Car, which didn’t come. We are still waiting a compensation for what happened in Madrid! It will come, and we also attempted to see what’s left in the hard tyres, but honestly, we knew that it was very, very unlikely that we could have kept Verstappen and, in particular, Leclerc behind,” Stella admitted.

Stella also pointed out that the team had not introduced its full upgrade package in Austin. Further parts will arrive over the coming weeks and bolster McLaren’s prospects in the closing stages of the season. “There will be some more stuff coming. I think ultimately we will only be able to do so across Brazil and Vegas. So Mexico, there won’t be very much, but Brazil and Vegas, there will be some upgrades,” said Stella.

“Hopefully, this will help us to, like I said before, be consistently in the fight for podiums and hopefully start to lean on the level of competitiveness that is required to fight for the victory, so there’s a few upgrades that are still in the pipeline,” the McLaren team principal added.