05/08/2025 09:15
McLaren boss Andrea Stella has explained the crucial decision to
split Hungarian Grand Prix strategies between Lando Norris and
Oscar Piastri. Norris used an unfancied one-stopper to claim
victory in Budapest, fending off a late charge from the
two-stopping Piastri. The Briton had been switched to a one-stop
after a bad first lap in which he dropped from third to fifth, and
then could not pass George Russell's Mercedes after clearing
Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin. Norris pitted for the only
time on Lap 31, leaving him 39 laps to run to complete the
one-stopper, with Piastri stopping for the second time on Lap 46,
and after clearing Charles Leclerc on Lap 51, had 19 laps to make
up 8.9s on Norris. The Australian fell 0.6s short at the flag, as
Norris cut Piastri's championship lead from 16 to nine points
heading into the summer break, as team principal Stella explained
how a "fair chance" was behind the thinking of committing Piastri
to a two-stop. "Our baseline strategy was a two-stop strategy; we
didn't think necessarily that the one-stop was possible," Stella
told media, including RacingNews365. "So with Oscar, we tried to
go on a good, deterministic two-stop strategy, trying to pass
Leclerc in the first stop and then extending the second stop to
have a tyre delta. "It was to have those few tenths of a second to
be able to pass Leclerc, and it worked. "When it comes to Lando and
the one-stop strategy, when we extended leaving Lando out, we
didn't think that the one-stop would have been possible, but credit
to Lando, he managed to put together some strong sectors and
lap-times with relatively used tyres. "So we somehow convinced
ourselves that the one-stop was starting to get in the game as we
progressed with the first stint, but it wasn't like entering the
race with the one and two-stop being equivalent. "We thought the
two-stop strategy would be the dominant strategy. "We wanted to
give Oscar a fair chance on Lando and not deviate too much from an
optimal two-stop because that would have been unfair to Oscar in
relation to his competition with Lando."
