Why Stella disagrees with McLaren’s perceived loss of form

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella disagrees with the notion that his team performed worse than expected in Imola, calling the comparison with a dominant Miami weekend like “apples and pears”.

Oscar Piastri took pole in Imola ahead of Max Verstappen, but after a brilliant pass by the world champion Red bull looked to have the measure of McLaren over a race distance, with much stronger tyre management than previously.

In the Red Bull camp there was a suggestion that both the squad’s own upgrades and McLaren underperforming played a part in a dramatic turnaround since Miami, where Verstappen finished 40 seconds behind winner Piastri.

But when asked why McLaren wasn’t performing as strongly as many had expected, team chief Stella disagreed that the squad had necessarily underperformed given Imola’s vastly different circuit layout compared to Miami.

“I am in disagreement with this statement. I think there’s a tendency to compare apples and pears,” Stella said. “When I was at school the teacher always said don’t compare apples and pears [oranges, sic]. Make sure you are specific, analytical, precise in how you use information.

“Imola belongs to the category of tracks like Saudi Arabia and Japan; high-speed corners, narrow tracks and if we look at those circuits’ pole position it was Red Bull. And in the race in Saudi, if it hadn’t been for the penalty for Max, Max would have won the race.

“If we look at the pace between McLaren and Red Bull in Japan and in Saudi, for me the picture is very consistent with the picture we had in Imola. But if we compare the race in Imola with the race in Miami, we are comparing an apple with a pear, and my school teacher would grab my ear and say, ‘don’t compare apple and pears’.

“Miami is a low-speed dominated circuit and with all the aerodynamic investment we have done, our car has improved massively in these low-speed corners. If we want to compare Miami, let’s look back at what happened in China, where the two McLarens disappeared, and Bahrain where Oscar dominated and Lando started in P6 but still he managed to recover positions.”

Why Monaco is a peach

The chief of F1’s papaya team dropped fruity suggestions that McLaren’s rival Red Bull had been playing up McLaren’s general car advantage regardless of the circuit, to increase the pressure on the Woking team, while others feel McLaren has been too eager to play down its form.

“If we compare the circuits that belong to the apple and the circuits that belong to the pears, I think you can derive your own implications in terms of where the factual assessment from a technical point of view is,” he said.

“F1 is a technical business but obviously some people are good at dropping baits here and there, moving away from the technical facts. It’s up to you to take the bait, let me say.”

When asked if Monaco is an apple of or a pear, Stella replied: “This one is a peach. This one is a complete one-off. I wouldn’t be surprised if, say, Ferrari is the lead car, so we will see.

“Maybe we do a few more races and we create some better, exact categories. I’m very curious to see whether for instance Baku will be a pear or a peach, I suspect it’s a peach, so we may continue this trend.”