Andrea Stella believes McLaren’s pace in last weekend’s United States Grand Prix was far more competitive that the race’s final classification suggests.
After a disappointing qualifying session at the Circuit of the Americas left Piastri seventh and Norris eighth on the grid, McLaren had a mountain to climb on Sunday.
Norris briefly looked capable of pulling off something special, climbing to second place in the closing stages of the race before being hunted down by Max Verstappen and Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton.
The final result was hardly a triumph, but Stella saw evidence that McLaren's underlying performance remains competitive with its principal rivals. The problem, he suggested, is extracting that performance consistently when it matters most.
Same old: A potential difficult to unlock
Norris had suggested after qualifying that his car might have been capable of fighting for second place. Stella was less convinced by that assessment, although he agreed that McLaren had left considerable performance untapped.
"I think in the race we saw that what we said could have been the potential of the car was actually realised," said the McLaren chief.
"Yesterday [in] qualifying, we thought that we had a faster car than we actually were able to realise on track. Lando said that the car could have been good for P2.
"I think that's a little bit of an exaggeration, because even if the potential was there, this year somehow is very difficult to use the full potential.
“It gets a little bit easier in the race, because you don't push as much as you do in qualifying. You necessarily leave a little bit of margin, and the car was, I think, today as competitive as the Ferraris and Red Bull, while [Kimi] Antonelli seemed to be a step ahead of everyone else."
That distinction is central to Stella's assessment. McLaren may have had the pace to compete with Ferrari and Red Bull over a race distance, but its inability to extract the same performance in qualifying left both drivers fighting from positions that complicated their Sunday.
Norris' late appearance in second place offered a glimpse of what might have been. However, McLaren's decision to commit to a one-stop strategy ultimately left him vulnerable as his rivals, running two stops, attacked on fresher tyres.
A gamble that could not keep Ferrari and Verstappen at bay
McLaren's strategy potentially offered Norris a route towards an unlikely podium, particularly if a Safety Car had disrupted the race. Without that intervention, however, the Briton was always going to face a difficult task holding off drivers with fresher rubber.
"For the one-stop, this gives you the possibility to take advantage of a Safety Car, which didn't come,” said Stella.
"We are still waiting a compensation for what happened in Madrid! It will come, and 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."
The gamble delivered Norris a temporary shot at glory, but ultimately exposed the limitations of McLaren's position. Piastri, meanwhile, finished seventh after spending part of the race fending off Mercedes' George Russell.
For a team that had enjoyed a brace of victories with Norris over the summer, the recent downturn has been difficult to disguise.
Read also: Norris admits McLaren now only ‘fourth fastest team’The Briton has now gone four consecutive races without a podium, while McLaren needs more than encouraging assessments of its underlying speed to restore itself to the sharp end of the field.
Stella, however, believes help is on the way.
Upgrades expected to revive McLaren's podium ambitions
McLaren has further development work in the pipeline, with new components scheduled to arrive over the next two rounds after Mexico, where the team does not expect to introduce much.
"There will be some more stuff coming. I think ultimately we will only be able to do so across Brazil and Vegas. So Mexico, there won't be very much, but Brazil and Vegas, there will be some upgrades," said Stella.
"Hopefully, this will help us to, like I said before, be consistently in the fight for podiums and hopefully start to lean on the level of competitiveness that is required to fight for the victory, so there's a few upgrades that are still in the pipeline."
The message from Stella is clear: McLaren does not believe it has fallen as far behind its rivals as Austin's results might suggest. But theoretical pace counts for little when qualifying leaves its drivers buried in the midfield and race strategy cannot compensate for lost track position.
The upcoming upgrades will offer McLaren an opportunity to turn that conviction into tangible results. Until then, matching Ferrari and Red Bull on pace is one thing; consistently beating them to the podium is another.
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