McLaren deny another pit stop woe cost Lando Norris in Baku

McLaren insist that a slow pit-stop did not cost Lando Norris positions in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Norris could only finish seventh as he failed to fully capitalise on McLaren teammate and title rival Oscar Piastri crashing out on the first lap of Sunday’s grand prix in Baku.

The Briton came home a frustrated P7 after ending up stuck in a DRS train behind Liam Lawson’s Racing Bulls and the Red Bull of Yuki Tsunoda.

To make matters worse, Norris suffered a slow pit-stop for the second consecutive weekend.

Despite experiencing a slow 4.1-second stop, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella rejected suggestions Norris missed the opportunity to claw back further ground on Piastri.

Norris could only gain six points on Piastri, who leads the world championship by 25 points with seven races remaining this season.

"The pit stop itself didn't make any difference because we would have ended up pretty much in the area of Leclerc," Stella told Sky Sports F1.

"For me, the most important takeaway was that the car wasn't fast enough.

"With a fast enough car, I think we would have been able to overtake and then have some free air and in free air actually use the full potential.”

McLaren must improve pitstop hardware

However, Stella did admit that McLaren need to make improvements to their pitstop hardware.

“In terms of pitstops, that's an area in which we have already concentrated our efforts,” the Italian explained.

“But as a matter of fact, we need to keep working because there's some important performance that is available through pitstops and we have seen that the racing, if anything, is getting tighter and tighter.

“So what is the impact of a pitstop now gets more and more important. So definitely, for the remainder of the season and also thinking about next year's car, there's work to do from a pitstop point of view for what is the execution of the pitstop, but also the hardware, such that executing a pitstop for our crew is just more straightforward and more natural.

“There's still some interactions between the operator and the hardware that should be improved from an hardware point of view.

“We know that from a hardware point of view, we are not optimising. This is not because we didn't want, this is because you kind of learn on the way.

“We know that there's room for improvement in terms of the equipment, in terms of the hardware on the equipment and the car side, so that we can make the life a little bit easier for our pitcrew.”

McLaren missed the chance to clinch the earliest-ever constructors' world championship in Baku, but should be crowned champions next time out in Singapore.