McLaren insists it has no big concerns about its Formula 1 title hopes as it thinks Lando Norris had the pace to win the United States Grand Prix.
Red Bull rival Max Verstappen is now 40 points behind championship leader Oscar Piastri following a dominant victory at Austin on Sunday, as he came home 7.959 seconds clear of Norris (who is now 14 points behind Piastri).
But while the result points to title momentum shifting away from McLaren and towards Red Bull and Verstappen, team principal Andrea Stella thought the reality was different.
Reflecting on how Norris's race was compromised after losing track position to Ferrari's Charles Leclerc at the first corner, Stella was convinced that McLaren should take heart from the pace of its car which he thinks was good enough to win.
"Today is a relatively reassuring race, because, without having to fight with Charles, which was certainly an entertaining fight itself, I think Lando had the pace to win the race," said Stella on Sunday.
"Obviously, he needed to gain the position on track, which is never easy with Max. And, with a one-stop strategy, we would not necessarily have had many opportunities from a strategic point of view.
"But performance-wise, I think we are reassured that the pace was sufficient to fight for the victory."
Stella suggested Norris losing out to Leclerc at Turn 1 was the decisive moment that changed the outcome of the race - and thought McLaren needed to look more into whether more could have been done to keep the Ferrari back.
“I think we have seen Lando’s performance at its finest,” said Stella. “If anything, we need to just check whether there was an opportunity in corner one to retain the position, which would have unfolded a completely different race if we were following Max rather than Charles.”
But despite Stella’s confidence about challenging Verstappen if it had been in clean air, Norris was not totally convinced.
He thinks the struggles that he faced getting past the Ferrari indicated how hard it would have been to be able to attack the lead Red Bull.
“I found it difficult enough just to get close to Charles, and their pace wasn't bad at all,” he said. “Until about 10 laps to go, he was like six seconds off of Max, so it wasn't like we were that far away, or their pace was that bad.”
While starting on the soft may have boosted Norris's chances of holding off Leclerc on the run to Turn 1, he thinks the battle was ultimately lost in qualifying.
Asked if he regretted not starting on the soft, Norris said: “I regret not putting a perfect lap and not going purple, purple, purple yesterday in qualifying.
“You can't ask these questions. I mean, you could do many different things. You never know what's going to work out.
“ I don't think our strategy was wrong. I think we did a good job. Potentially, we should have, we'll look back and see if we should have just boxed as soon as we got ahead of Charles, or just try undercut and see if that works out.
"But it was a long way to go on the soft but then you put yourself under safety car risk.”
Sprint consequences
Stella believes that McLaren’s hopes were dented even before the start of the race by the way that it had lost valuable track data from the first corner wipeout between its drivers in Saturday’s sprint.
This meant it could not take risks with how aggressive it went with its ride heights – where one or two millimetres can make a big difference to performance.
So knowing that there was more pace available from its car, Stella sees no requirement for a change of plan on upgrades or a need to do anything different for the rest of the campaign.
“I think not having done the sprint race left us a little bit on the back foot from a set-up point of view, and in hindsight we can see already that there was more performance that we could have extracted from the car.
“But when it comes to new upgrades, new parts, then this will not happen for the rest of the season.”
Stella thinks everything remains open for McLaren and that it needs to stay calm and maximise its performance if it is to hold on and take the crown.
“Definitely, we have a large opportunity,” he said. “The outcome of this season, and the drivers’ championship, is in our hands. It is not in someone else's hands.
“That's the mindset that we want to have and that's the mindset that we will have.”
