Stella pushes McLaren to take measures following Verstappen's dominant win

Not a great weekend for McLaren in Monza. After being tricked during qualifying by Verstappen, Norris and Piastri also lost the race, seeing Verstappen win again in Italy. Stella has learned the lesson.

McLaren in Italy showed their weakness on low-drag tracks, and Verstappen took advantage of the opportunity given by the Papaya to win the Italian GP. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri finished 19 seconds behind the Dutchman at the end of the GP. The Woking based team also faced another controversial moment in driver management after Norris’s slow pit stop.

'It's a lesson to be learned'

Stella admitted, talking to GPBlog.com after the race, that they weren't expecting this gap: "Well, I have to admit here that while we were expecting not to be as dominant as they were in Hungary and Zandvoort. We did not expect to have this kind of gap to any of our competitors. We thought we would still be potentially, hopefully, as competitive, as fast as anybody else. But we have to admit that yesterday Red Bull were one or two tenths faster than us. And probably today they were a little bit more than that, faster than us, considering that Verstappen was in condition to overtake Lando, and considering how much he was opening the gap in the first stint."

Norris battling with Verstappen in Monza

The Italian team principal also said that McLaren will take this race as a "lesson" for the future: "Like I said yesterday, there may be some technical reasons why that is the case. I think we have seen that anytime Red Bull has gone on a low level of drag, so small rear wings, they seem to retain a lot of aerodynamic efficiency. And I think I explained yesterday that we design our car not in this regime, but in a different regime. But this tends to follow a trend that we also had last year. So I think for us, in terms of fundamental design, there's certainly a lesson to be learned because we don't want to be competitive only in a certain category of circuits. We want to be competitive in all circuits."

Read also

Leclerc loses Monza podium? Vasseur responds: ‘It’s a shame'

Piastri radio reveals not everyone at McLaren agreed with team orders

Hulkenberg's shock DNS mars promising weekend at Italian Grand Prix