McLaren boss Andrea Stella has defended his team's tyre strategy even though it left Lando Norris at risk.

When Kevin Magnussen stopped on track and the VSC was deployed, the status quo was maintained, which meant that race leader Max Verstappen was uncatchable and Norris had a suitable comfort cushion ahead of his pursuers.

However, all that changed when the full Safety Car was deployed, which, of course, meant a restart.

However, while those around switched to softs or mediums, Norris was fitted with hards which were ready and waiting in his garage.

This meant that while hunting down soft-shod Verstappen would be nigh impossible, the Briton would be under threat from Hamilton who was also on the red-banded rubber.

"They put me on hard tyres. I don't know why, they're still beginners in some things," joked Norris at race end.

"I think they just wanted to give me a bit more of a test, I guess," he added. "That is what Zak said anyway, probably Zak called the shots on that one.

"I mean, I wanted the softs. I feel like it made a bit more sense, especially with the safety car coming out, but I don't care. I am P2 so all good."

"Under the Virtual Safety Car, we were happy to go on hard tyres because it wouldn't have been a problem in terms of warm up," explained Stella. "But then the Virtual Safety Car was converted into a Safety Car when we were pitting, and everything was ready at the pitstop to put hard tyres on, a last-minute change to soft would have been an operational problem.

"If you have the crew ready with the hard tyres, and you make a call for soft tyres, it means that the guys that need to pick the tyres would have to rush there in the garage, remove the blankets, and bring the tyres back," he added. "It can create quite a bit of a situation, and it could have delayed the pitstop.

"We thought that this is not one of those situations in which the hard tyres have a massive difference from a warm-up point of view to the soft," he continued, believing that while the hards took longer to warm-up once on track, the very nature of the Silverstone track minimised the performance between the hard and softs once they were up to speed.

"We thought that this is not one of those situations in which the hard tyres have a massive difference from a warm-up point of view to the soft. If you can manage the first four corners, and then you go through corner nine, you start to generate a decent amount of temperature. So we kept the decision simple.

"We didn't want to change the allocation of tyres at the pitstop because this could have meant a significant delay. And, accepting that it could have cost us at the restart maybe one position, that was the most sensible thing to do."

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Endre, 10/07/2023 14:41

"Totally agree with @flyinglap. They didn't have a chance to fight Max because they have given up. Both Lando and Oscar were on Max's pace until they decided to go into tire management mode. When they saw how well Russel's softs were holding up, they should have ruled out hards for the second stint many laps before the pit window, so their excuse on "operational problem" is a BS. If they go on softs, Lando would have had a good chance to take the fight to Max and Oscar most likely ends up on the podium."

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2. Posted by flyinglap, 10/07/2023 12:25

"McLaren still need to find their winning ways, especially in terms of mentality. It has been so long since the team's last victory, there is hardly anyone presently in the team who actually was around when they were consistently winning. Lando Norris could have won yesterday, or at least fought for the win against Verstappen matter of factly, instead of risking to lose second against Hamilton on a slower car. Andrea Stella has to be commended for turning things around for the team in such a short span of time, nevertheless his thinking regarding the choice of hard tyres instead of softs is flawed. Even a slight chance of a victory always has to be chosen over fear of losing one (lesser) place, or even more than one. Rather, it looks like the team felt that giving Norris the right tyre to fight for the win against Verstappen would have increased the odds of an incident and therefore of a potential loss of valuable points for the constructors championship. Let's see how they will handle themselves next time they are, if/when they are, presented with a similar opportunity."

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Stella defends Norris tyre strategy

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