02/10/2023
NEWS STORY
Amidst claims of bias at McLaren, team boss Andrea Stella admits he is keen to avoid the continued use of team orders that favour Lando Norris.
The events of a number of recent races, including Hungary, Italy and the Japanese Grand Prix, have led to claims that the Woking team is favouring its British driver in favour of his Australian teammate.
At Suzuka the pair were on different strategies and rather than endanger its hopes of a double podium finish, McLaren called on Piastri to yield to his teammate rather than hold him up as they battled for position.
Fair enough one might say, but this came on the back of similar calls at the Hungaroring and Monza, which have led to calls from fans - and yes, we mean you Kenji - of bias.
"It was much, much easier in a way, as those two situations were stressful, especially the one in Monza," explains Andrea Stella, according to Motorsport.com. "And when I say stressful, I mean stressful because we created stress between our two drivers, which we could have avoided.
"That's something that we reviewed," he continues. "It may happen again in the future, but when it is avoidable, we should avoid it.
"In this case, the approach was; 'let's see how fast Lando is closing, and let's see if the overtaking comes naturally'. When we saw that it doesn't come so natural, then we asked the drivers to swap, so that we wouldn't lose race time for both.
"In a race like this, every lap of tyre that you save, so if you pit one lap later than somebody else, you gain one tenth," insists the Italian. "Lando at that stage pitted six laps later, so his car is automatically six tenths quicker than the other car.
"Also, in addition to that, I have to say that Lando's pace was very good in absolute terms. And if anything, we have to look with Oscar at where we could have gained the one or two tenths overall pace that he seemed to lack compared to Lando."