McLaren to investigate "technical reasons" behind pace deficit to Red Bull at Italian GP

McLaren boss Andrea Stella has admitted his team will need to understand why they were defeated by Red Bull at the Italian Grand Prix.

For arguably the first time this season, McLaren were beaten on raw pace alone at Monza.

Max Verstappen pipped Lando Norris to pole position, beating Lewis Hamilton’s 2020 track record.

Verstappen went on to win the race by over 19 seconds, controlling the race from the front in 2023-like fashion.

McLaren have failed to win four of the 16 races so far this year.

Verstappen won at Suzuka and Imola, but on both occasions, it seemed like McLaren had the edge on pace.

George Russell won the Canadian Grand Prix from pole after an error-filled session from Norris.

Stella feels their shortcomings at Monza, which requires an efficient car, are an important lesson for the team.

“Like I said yesterday, there may be some technical reasons why that is the case,” he said. “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.”

McLaren surprised by Red Bull pace

McLaren were in a league of their own at Zandvoort, running over one second faster a lap than their nearest competitor.

Stella conceded that McLaren expected to have more competition at Monza, but didn’t think they’d be comprehensively out-paced by Verstappen.

“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,” he explained.

“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.”