McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has explained the reasoning behind asking Oscar Piastri to wave Lando Norris past in Formula 1โs United States Grand Prix.
๐ The Core Development
Piastri and Norris locked out the fourth row of the grid at the Circuit of The Americas, having failed to challenge the Mercedes , Red Bulls and Ferraris in Q3.
However, over the first seven laps of the race, Piastri lost one second per lap to race leader Kimi Antonelli โ precisely 0.997s on average, discounting lap one โ and couldnโt even keep up with a struggling George Russell , who was pulling away by two tenths a lap.
๐ Background & Sector Context
Norris complained on the radio he was โbeing held upโ by his team-mate; McLaren asked the Australian to let his team-mate through, which he duly did in Turn 1 on lap eight. Norris went on to pull away by four seconds in seven laps.
โWe had seen during the weekend that Lando was a little bit faster than Oscar,โ Stella detailed. โThis is a track in which Lando excels and is one of the tracks in which Oscar instead struggles a little bit more.
๐ Industry & Real-World Impact
โThis year, in particular for Oscar, is tricky because Oscar's superpower is to build; once he creates references, he can really effectively build lap after lap. But here every lap is different, so these are the conditions that challenge Oscar and actually are the conditions where Lando uses his own superpower, which is being very adaptive to the conditions, especially as the car slides.
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๐ฎ Strategic Outlook & What Lies Ahead
โSo, given this context, we discussed before the race that if Lando was behind Oscar, and Oscar could not keep up with the cars ahead, then we could have given Lando a chance or an opportunity to see if we could attack the cars ahead โ and that's what we did.โ
This meant a lot to McLaren after its drivers collided in the Singapore sprint race. โIt's a way of demonstrating that as a team and together with the drivers, we care about the interests of the team, which was always the conversation that we have had,โ Stella added.
