‘There was no option to retain the lead’ – Stella outlines the logic behind Norris’ ‘unlucky’ stop in Madrid

McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella has explained why McLaren opted to pit Lando Norris for fresh tyres just as the Virtual Safety Car period came to an end, admitting that “there was no option to retain the lead” of the Spanish Grand Prix.

With overtaking set to be a challenge at the Madring, Norris had already put himself in a strong position to chase down a potential third victory of the season as he topped Qualifying with a memorable last-gasp effort.

The Briton then succeeded in holding off Kimi Antonelli on the opening lap and gradually eked out a confident advantage over his rivals, managing his tyres until the Virtual Safety Car was deployed to recover Lance Stroll’s stricken Aston Martin.

While Antonelli and Max Verstappen could take advantage and box under the slowed racing conditions, Norris missed out on the opportunity and only headed into the pits as the VSC ended, where he suffered a 7s stop that dropped him to P5.

Despite his driver’s recovery to P3, Stella couldn’t hide the team’s frustration, as he told F1 TV: “Starting from pole position, leading the race and having incredible pace… this would’ve been a race won by many seconds, and we ended up in third position.

“The reality is that in racing, there are elements that you can control and some that you cannot control. The timing of the Virtual Safety Car was a couple of seconds too late – Lando had already passed the pit entry – and then he was a few seconds too early because then it was ending once he came in to pit.”

Asked to elaborate on the reasoning behind the call, Stella said: “The logic is that if you stay out, you stay out with used mediums [that are] already grained, and it means that at some stage you will pit behind the people that have already pitted on the hard tyres, so it’s going to be a similar race to [Charles] Leclerc.

“We would actually have pitted even earlier because the medium would finish earlier, so there was no option really to retain the lead.

“We needed to accept that the timing was incredibly unfortunate and, like I said, it’s a positive race overall.

“The elements that we could not control made a difference but those that we could control make us very optimistic for the future.”

McLaren have made steady gains throughout the season that culminated in Norris’ commanding victories in Hungary and the Netherlands, and this weekend further demonstrated their progress.

Max Verstappen, who only just kept him behind on the closing laps at the Madring, stated that the reigning World Champion was “faster than all of us”, while Antonelli believed that Norris “deserved to win”.

Stella concluded: “Just very unlucky, but I want to think that the positive message of a McLaren [that was] so competitive at a very different circuit layout to Zandvoort and Hungary is very encouraging for the future.

“We take it on the chin. Today we were too fast to win the race because had we been a little slower, we would’ve made it to the pits! We have a smile on our faces, we look forward to the rest of the season.”