McLaren Hoped To 'Put Verstappen In An Unusual Position' In Sao Paulo
F1Tuesday, 07 November 2023 at 21:00
McLaren F1 team principal Andrea Stella detailed the team's approach to the 2023 Sao Paulo Grand Prix at Interlagos Circuit.
Unfortunately for McLaren, their second driver Oscar Piastri fell victim to the first-lap incident between Nico Hulkenberg, Kevin Magnussen, and Alex Albon.
The Australian driver had to go and fix his car during the red flag but had to start a lap down on everybody as a consequence, which erased all his hopes and chances for points.
On the other hand, Lando Norris moved into the second position for the race restart and had a very decent chance of challenging Max Verstappen for the lead of the race. Andrea Stella explained to the media:
"I think certainly in terms of our approach, especially after the red flag, we wanted to win it. So we put, at the start, our best set of Softs on, we decided to start on a new set so that we could try and take the lead."
In the best-case scenario, Norris could overtake Verstappen before the first corner, which would complicate the race for the Flying Dutchman as he would then have to overheat his car and tires to get the position back.
"From there, [we hoped to maybe] put Verstappen in an unusual position and see what we could do, maybe we can just cover any time he pits, and so on."
However, the McLaren driver could not overtake the three-time World Champion into the first corner as he did not have such a brilliant start this time.
Because of the advantage of fresher tires, Norris was able to hold on to Verstappen and surprise him when he caught up with him going into the first corner. The Dutchman had to go defensive, but did everything right and got away with it.
"We couldn't take the lead at the start. We went very close to doing that on track [but could not]. After that, our tires started to overheat."
From that point on, Norris had to drop back to avoid overheating his car too much, and it was just about managing the race in the front for the Red Bull driver.
"I think after that, Verstappen had enough of a lead to actually manage the situation. Any time we tried to go to get a little closer, even there were a few laps in the second stint in which we seemed like to go [fast], he put together a couple of mega laps."
Norris said in the post-race interview, "P2 is as good as we can get nowadays", suggesting that as long as Verstappen or his team don't make a mistake, McLaren doesn't stand a chance.
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