McLaren believes it remains in the Formula 1 world championship fight regardless of the outcome at Monza, but the team isn’t as competitive in Italy as it had hoped
After two wins on the high-downforce tracks of Budapest and Zandvoort, McLaren suffered a minor setback in qualifying for the Formula 1 race at Monza—including in terms of the team’s vague World Championship ambitions. While Team Principal Andrea Stella still sees the team as in the title fight, they aren’t as competitive at Monza as they’d like to be.
McLaren had expected significantly better results than third and ninth place, but Stella doesn’t want to make too much of the gap: “When you consider the entire process—the car’s setup, the optimization of the chassis, driving style, and power unit—I think we saw in qualifying that we had achieved a relatively competitive position,” he says.
The team principal attributed the failure to achieve a major breakthrough primarily to shortcomings in operational execution as well as the extreme slipstreaming on the straights. Under ideal circumstances, a top-tier finish would have been realistic, but because Oscar Piastri braked too late when he was supposed to provide slipstream for Lando Norris, Norris had no chance of a good result.
“If we had done a better job with the execution and control of certain parameters—which don’t depend solely on the car’s raw performance—we definitely could have qualified in the first two rows of the grid,” Stella believes.
Not a Car for Pole Position
For the Papaya Team, nothing less than the world championship title is at stake at this stage of the season. However, merely tagging along with the chasing pack isn’t enough to put pressure on the leaders in the overall standings. Stella deliberately sets the bar high for his team and doesn’t shy away from a ruthless investigation into the root causes.
“From a performance standpoint, Monza was essentially a ‘half-pass’ as a test of the MCL40’s capabilities,” the Italian openly admits, placing the result squarely in the context of the title race.
“If we want to relate this to the World Championship: To be a full-fledged contender in the World Championship again, it’s obviously not enough to say we were in the top two rows of the grid. You want the performance to be able to say: We have the best car and are now racing for the win. I’m not sure if we can claim that here at Monza.”
The track’s characteristics did not forgive the remaining weaknesses in aerodynamics. The competition—led by the unstoppable Alpine team and Mercedes—mercilessly exploited their top-speed advantages. “This is a very unique track, and we can see that some of our rivals were extremely fast,” said Stella.
“But at no point did we demonstrate that we clearly have the car capable of fighting for pole position and that we have the best car on the grid. So we still have some work ahead of us,” was the team principal’s sobering assessment.
Development race as the key to the title
Despite the setbacks in the high-speed sectors, there’s no panic whatsoever in Woking. Sunday’s race still offers opportunities for big points thanks to the expected “yo-yo racing” and strategic uncertainties.
For the rest of the season, however, Stella is calling for a noticeable improvement from the R&D department to permanently close the gap to the leaders. “We’re definitely staying in the fight, no matter what happens at Monza,” said the Italian.
“But we need to put even more work into developing the car if we want to catch up to Antonelli and Mercedes in the World Championship.”
