Andrea Stella on the McLaren pit wall - Photo: RacePictures

McLaren on high alert as key weakness deemed unfixable in 2025

18:40, 14 Oct

byNorberto Mujica

McLaren's pitstop woes are set to continue throughout the remainder of the 2025 Formula One season, team principal Andrea Stella claims.

It's just a coincidence due to the short observation window of the last couple of events that these accumulated on Lando's side.

- Andrea Stella defuses bias claims

Recently McLaren have uncovered an obnoxious gremlin that has compromised the integrity of the Woking-based team's pitstops, leading to awkward on track moments.

In fact, the recurring issue has hit McLaren in every single one of the last three rounds, a trend that Stella expects to see repeated.

"For the sake of checking it, we saw that, when you average the pitstop time, it is pretty much the same over the season for Lando and Oscar," Stella said after the Singapore Grand Prix.

"We know that from a hardware point of view, our hardware makes the operation, the gunning, a little bit more complex than it should be.

"We have identified that. We are applying some corrections, which will be mainly for next year now."

Oscar PIastri suffered a 5.25s slow stop in Singapore GP - Race Pictures

Stella then stated that McLaren found itself in the midst of trying to find a way to mitigate the issue's potential impact.

He continued: "But at the same time, we are working with our pitcrew to make sure that we can mitigate some of these difficulties introduced by the hardware.

"There is quite a lot of work of review and correction and testing and practising at the factory with the rig. It's a very holistic and wide activity.

"But I'm happy with what I see in terms of review and action and planning for the future."

Driver bias claims refuted

Wehreas it was Norris who'd suffer two consecutive slow stops in Italy and in Azerbaijan, it would be Piastri who encountered the issue next at the Singapore Grand Prix.

Although Piastri's outing at the Marina Bay Street Circuit was not compromised by the issue, Norris was handicapped in Italy - which McLaren could reverse via team orders - in Baku the British driver would not be so lucky, with F1TV analyst Jolyon Palmer a P5 finish might have been lost as a result.

"It's just a coincidence due to the short observation window of the last couple of events that these accumulated on Lando's side. But actually, the data doesn't seem to support that across the season," Stella concluded.

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