McLaren annoyed that they didn’t act quickly enough in qualifying and sent the drivers out on track too late: that cost them valuable positions
McLaren is still annoyed about qualifying ahead of the Formula 1 race in Brazil, which only earned Lando Norris seventh place on the grid. While Aston Martin had secured the second row of the grid by positioning itself early in the pit lane in the decisive Q3, McLaren waited too long to go out and was at a disadvantage due to the onset of bad weather.
This particularly annoyed team principal Andrea Stella, who said that his team was not quick enough to act: “We didn’t actually plan to go out so late. We actually wanted to drive as soon as we saw someone leave the garage,” he says.
However, McLaren was too slow with the process of leaving the garage, “and so we only ended up seventh in the holding pattern. That was simply not good execution,” criticizes the team boss and stresses that the racing team has learned from this.
The situation had already been discussed on Saturday morning before the shootout and corrective measures had been taken. However, McLaren would like to talk about it again next week, “because all these situations are opportunities to improve as a team,” says Stella.
“It’s not to do with the performance of the car, it’s to do with the racing, the robustness and making sure you can exploit the performance of the car,” he continues. On Friday, they “clearly missed an opportunity because we didn’t take the right approach as a team to be at the front of the field as soon as the lights turned green.”
McLaren also missed out on a better starting position with Oscar Piastri. The Australian then went off the track on a slippery track and therefore only took tenth place on the grid for the race