Why being "very adaptive" gave Norris the edge over Piastri at US GP

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has explained the reasoning behind asking Oscar Piastri to wave Lando Norris past in Formula 1’s United States Grand Prix.

Piastri and Norris locked out the fourth row of the grid at the Circuit of The Americas, having failed to challenge the Mercedes, Red Bulls and Ferraris in Q3.

However, over the first seven laps of the race, Piastri lost one second per lap to race leader Kimi Antonelli – precisely 0.997s on average, discounting lap one – and couldn’t even keep up with a struggling George Russell, who was pulling away by two tenths a lap.

Norris complained on the radio he was “being held up” by his team-mate; McLaren asked the Australian to let his team-mate through, which he duly did in Turn 1 on lap eight. Norris went on to pull away by four seconds in seven laps.

“We had seen during the weekend that Lando was a little bit faster than Oscar,” Stella detailed. “This is a track in which Lando excels and is one of the tracks in which Oscar instead struggles a little bit more.

Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren, Andrea Stella, McLaren

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“This year, in particular for Oscar, is tricky because Oscar's superpower is to build; once he creates references, he can really effectively build lap after lap. But here every lap is different, so these are the conditions that challenge Oscar and actually are the conditions where Lando uses his own superpower, which is being very adaptive to the conditions, especially as the car slides.

“So, given this context, we discussed before the race that if Lando was behind Oscar, and Oscar could not keep up with the cars ahead, then we could have given Lando a chance or an opportunity to see if we could attack the cars ahead – and that's what we did.”

This meant a lot to McLaren after its drivers collided in the Singapore sprint race. “It's a way of demonstrating that as a team and together with the drivers, we care about the interests of the team, which was always the conversation that we have had,” Stella added.

“And especially after Singapore, we reinforced how much it's important that we all together help McLaren go back to the position that we want to have, which is Oscar and Lando, first row in qualifying, fighting for the win, and then we manage the internal competition. But up to then, all together, we need to sustain the trajectory of McLaren back to the front.”

How Norris fought for the podium

Lando Norris, McLaren

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

McLaren picked a one-stop strategy in a bid to challenge the other top teams on Sunday, with Ferrari duo Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, plus Max Verstappen on two stops. Norris consequently held second place until lap 46, before succumbing to those three drivers – but he still managed to undercut Isack Hadjar and Russell on his way to fifth place, with Piastri likewise beating the Silver Arrow to seventh.

“We tried to deploy the hard tyres, which in practice seemed to be competitive, and we knew that the others were going for the softer side of the tyre allocation,” Stella explained. “Once we saw the first stint and the fact that they were struggling a bit, we got some encouragement that using the hard tyres could have been a good way of catching up.

“So, we were actually catching up compared to the two Ferraris and Verstappen in the second stint. At some stage, we just decided to go for the one-stop, because if we go for a two, we are always going to stay behind. The one-stop gives you the possibility to take advantage of a safety car, which didn't come. We are still waiting for a compensation for what happened in Madrid – it will come,” the Italian added, referring to Norris losing a potential win to an untimely VSC period at Madring.

Lando Norris, McLaren

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

“We also attempted to see what's left in the hard tyres, but honestly, we knew that it was very, very unlikely that we could have kept Verstappen and in particular Leclerc behind. With Hamilton, we thought it was more dependent on the final tail of the hard tyres. Nobody could have known, but worthwhile giving it a go.

“We are happy with the strategy execution; we are happy with the fact that we kind of understood which tyres needed to be used today; happy with the fact that the car seems to have improved thanks to the upgrades. But we need to improve our qualifying performance, and we also need to keep improving the car if we want to consistently compete for podiums, but above all for victories.”

McLaren is on a four-round podiumless streak, its worst spell of form by that metric since the last two rounds of the 2023 season and the first two of its title-winning 2024 campaign.