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McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has shed light on why the team ordered Oscar Piastri to yield position to teammate Lando Norris during the United States Grand Prix.
Both Piastri and Norris lined up on the fourth row of the grid at the Circuit of the Americas, having been unable to match the front-running pace of Mercedes, Red Bull, and Ferrari in the decisive qualifying shootout.
During the opening seven laps, the Australian struggled for pace, hemorrhaging an average of nearly a second per lap (0.997s, excluding the opening tour) to race leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli. Piastri was even unable to stay in touch with a struggling George Russell, who was pulling away at two-tenths per lap.
Norris voiced his frustration over team radio, reporting that he was being held up, which prompted the McLaren pit wall to order Piastri to swap positions. Piastri complied heading into Turn 1 on Lap 8, with Norris opening up a four-second cushion over his teammate in just the next seven laps.
"Throughout the weekend, we could see that Lando had a slight edge over Oscar," Stella explained. "This is a circuit where Lando always excels, whereas for Oscar, it tends to be one of the more challenging venues on the calendar."
"This year has presented unique challenges for Oscar because his greatest strength is building pace incrementally—once he finds his reference points, he gains time lap after lap. Here, however, conditions were shifting with every single tour, which made things trickier for Oscar and played right into Lando's biggest asset: his exceptional adaptability, especially when the car starts to slide."
"With that in mind, we agreed before the race that if Lando was stuck behind Oscar and Oscar couldn't match the cars ahead, we would give Lando the opportunity to attack. That is precisely what we executed," the Italian added.
Team discipline took center stage for McLaren following the collision between their two drivers during the Sprint in Singapore.
"This shows that together with our drivers, we put the team's interests above everything else—something we have consistently emphasized," Stella stressed. "Particularly after what happened in Singapore, we reminded ourselves how crucial it is to stay united and push McLaren back to where we belong: with Oscar and Lando locking out the front row in qualifying and fighting for race wins. Only then will we manage their rivalry. Until that point, we must work collaboratively to maintain the team's upward trajectory."
McLaren's strategy and the fight at the front
McLaren opted for an aggressive alternative one-stop strategy to take the fight to their rivals. In contrast, Ferrari duo Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, along with Max Verstappen, ran on a two-stop plan. Norris defended second place until Lap 46 before eventually surrendering to the two-stoppers, but he still capitalized over Isack Hadjar and Russell to come home in fifth. Piastri also cleared the Mercedes to secure a seventh-place finish.
"We committed to the hard compound, which showed strong potential in practice, knowing our rivals were leaning toward softer rubber," Stella said. "After the opening stint, when we saw them running into degradation issues, we felt confident that running the hards was the right way to close the gap."
"In the second phase of the race, we were genuinely eating into the advantage of both Ferraris and Verstappen. At that stage, sticking to the one-stop made the most sense, because stopping twice would have guaranteed finishing behind them. It also kept us in play for a potential Safety Car, which ultimately never materialized. We are still waiting for a bit of luck to balance out what happened in Madrid," Stella added, referring to Norris's lost victory due to a Virtual Safety Car in the Spanish capital.
"We extracted everything we could from the hard tires, though we knew keeping Verstappen and particularly Leclerc behind was a tall order. With Hamilton, it came down to tire life in the closing laps. You can never predict these things with certainty, but it was a gamble well worth taking."
"We are pleased with our strategic execution and how accurately we read the tire dynamics on race day. The car is clearly making strides with the latest upgrades. However, we must address our qualifying performance and maintain our development push if we want to consistently fight for podiums and, ultimately, victories."
The US Grand Prix marked McLaren's fourth consecutive race without a podium finish—their longest dry spell since the tail end of the 2023 campaign and the opening rounds of their 2024 championship season.
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