Can McLaren challenge Mercedes and Ferrari? - F1 boss predicts Austrian GP chances

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has assessed his team's chances of catching pace-setters Mercedes and Ferrari at the upcoming Austrian Grand Prix. 

After recording second-place finishes with Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris in Japan and Miami, McLaren has fallen off the front-running pace in recent weeks. Although Norris finished third last weekend in Barcelona, this came after Kimi Antonelli retired late in the day, and came in a race where heavy tyre-wear meant drivers were forced to manage the rubber, rather than push. 

Unlike the Barcelona layout, Austria's Red Bull Ring features a series of high-speed straights into heavy braking zones, and low-speed corners. 

Looking ahead to the weekend, Stella gave his thoughts on where his team could stand in the pecking order. 

“Austria is a slightly different circuit," he said. 

"Like here, the stability and the braking and turning is so essential. Here in Barcelona, there's more like a straight line braking, and then you're going through some corners at low speed, and so it's a slightly different circuit compared to here. 

"But I would expect that Ferrari remains the faster car in the corners. Probably Mercedes is the best car overall over a single lap when the chassis and the power unit are both considered."

After a first weekend without any reliability concerns in some time, Stella urged Mercedes not to let drop the ball with its power unit - although Mercedes factory driver Kimi Antonelli did retire with a familiar battery problem.

Focused on areas beyond the power unit, and with a clear determination to bring performance to the car, Stella added: “We aim for the coming races to develop our car further by bringing some upgrades.

"But at the same time, we are certain that our competitors will also have some upgrades. So for us, honestly, we want to look at our own trajectory, we want to make sure that race by race we improve our car, and then we kind of let the results take care of themselves.

“So maximum focus at the moment is, I would say, internal. What we need to do to improve the car. And then once we are racing, we will see what we need to do. It could be another hot and high degradation weekend. So it's important also that we improve from a tire exploitation point of view.”