McLaren team boss, Andrea Stella insists on keeping both feet on the ground as he admits perfect conditions were a significant contributory factor in the team’s qualifying performance.

While the rest of his team whooped with joy, fist bumping all and sundry, Stella wasn't getting carried away.

For a few brief moments Lando Norris had pole for his and the team's home race, only to be denied by world champion, Max Verstappen.

However, with Oscar Piastri putting his car third on the grid, ahead of the Ferrari and Mercedes duos, it appeared to represent a massive step forward for the Woking team.

The qualifying result comes a week after Norris finished fourth in Austria, suggesting that the upgrades that were only available to him at the time, were working. However, some pointed to the cooler temperatures and C3 tyres, which also seemed to suit the MCL60 in Spain.

"There's definitely a pattern," said Stella. "High speed corners, cold conditions, soft tyres and, by the way, the same compound, the C3, so, we like these conditions, our car likes it.

"The rear end kind of finds naturally some good grip," he continued, "which we may be missing over continuous laps, or when it's hotter. So conditions come to our favour.

"But, at the same time, I think, in this result, some contribution is coming from the improvements we've made to the car. We measure these improvements in terms of downforce, and we see that in some of the low speed corners, we are decently competitive now.

"But still, we have a GPS overlays, and we can see that some cars are quicker than us," he admitted. "This just confirms what is our objective in terms of development.

"While we have improved the car in terms of aerodynamic efficiency, we haven't made yet large enough improvements in terms of elements that can condition and can improve the race pace. So I would still expect that there's cars around us that will be quicker in terms of race pace, like Ferrari, and possibly Mercedes as well. We'll see also Aston Martin, how they do. It will depend also, to some extent, on the conditions. Cold conditions should favour us for the same reasons, even in the race."

"It's like 70 per cent not fixed, 30 per cent fixed," said Norris, "just by making the car quicker, adding load and having a better performance. I think 70 per cent at the minute is more than if we just had more load, more of it will be covered. But it's not the whole solution.

"Days like today prove that we're not miles away on certain things. It's just some characteristics and handling, that I would still say we've had as an inherent issue over the last five years, that we definitely still struggle with."

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