“Also, thanks to making the brave decision in the situation with the red flag of not stopping and staying out on tyres that were relatively worn at the time, this played to the advantage of Max and advantage of Alpine, and even Alpine deserve definitely congratulations for a double-podium finish.”
It’s always easy to judge strategy calls in hindsight, but the decision to bring Norris into the pits under the VSC was instrumental in dropping him behind other cars on a day where overtaking off-line into the spray was proving incredibly difficult.
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But Stella was clear that McLaren made the right calls at the right times, given they are fighting for the constructors’ title as well, on a day where one Ferrari failed to finish, and Sergio Perez’s Red Bull wound up out of the points.
“I back the decisions we made because it came with the full agreement of the drivers, the pit wall, and also a little bit of reason that we need to make sure we stay on track, because we compete for points, we compete for both championships and we need to finish races.
“Personally, I’m not very comfortable to leave a car out there with tyres that are pretty worn with that amount of water. Without the red flag, we would be commenting on a different kind of race here.”
