McLaren F1 boss casts remarkable Silverstone verdict after podium near-miss

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella says that fourth place for Lando Norris in the British GP was an “overachievement”, benchmarking the gap to the pacesetters at a painful half a second.

Norris lost a spot at the start at Silverstone and ran P7 initially. However, he took advantage of issues for Isack Hadjar, Kimi Antonelli and Max Verstappen to move up to P4 at the flag.

Meanwhile, Oscar Piastri dropped to the back after first-lap contact with Liam Lawson triggered a front wing change. He recovered to finish out of the points in P11.

Stella conceded that the race highlighted the significant deficit to Mercedes and Ferrari.

“Overall, the race confirmed that our performance today was in line with qualifying,” he said when asked by Crash.net to summarise the team’s difficult day. “So we still exhibit a decent gap to Ferrari and Mercedes – probably around half a second. 

“I think the pace with Red Bull was closer; I would say Lando was spending a lot of time behind Hadjar, which was a bit of a shame. Otherwise, I think he would have been closer to the leaders. But definitely there's work to do, and I think this is in the measure of half a second. 

“On Lando's side, we took advantage of accidents that happened to other people. I think, actually, the strategy was working very well. Lando did a good job of being able to drive the car with old tyres, and he kept going at a decent pace. 

“This put us in a strong position for the second stint with fresher tyres, and he was getting closer and closer to the guys that were fighting at the front, with Verstappen blocking Hamilton and Russell. 

“P4, I think it's an overachievement. [It was] not on our own merit, it's more because other people had trouble.”

Stella admitted that Piastri lost more time than necessary because the team underestimated the wing damage after the first-lap contact.

The Australian initially stayed out, only for the wing to collapse completely, costing him time as he made his way back to the pits.

“On Oscar's side, he got sandwiched by the two Racing Bulls,” said Stella. “I'm not sure if this was clear, because we didn't have [TV] coverage. And it was difficult for us to assess what kind of damage [there was]. 

“From the data, it looked like there was damage on the front wing, but it looked like it was in the endplate area, so we stayed out one more lap. And the wing actually failed, so we lost time, and we needed to pit. 

“Oscar was running at the back, but he was showing decent pace there. But it was always going to be difficult for Oscar to score points. 

“So a decent amount of points, considering our level of competitiveness. A shame that Oscar didn't add to this points haul, but overall we go away from Silverstone aware that there's quite a bit of work to do.”

Stella admits that a perfect storm of factors contributed to the team’s recent drop-off in form, which was exacerbated by the nature of Silverstone.

“I think the fact that we are out of sync with upgrades is probably the biggest single factor,” he said. “We see that everyone bringing upgrades improved their lap time potential by three-tenths or something. 

“And definitely this would not fill the gap that we have to Ferrari and Mercedes, because I think it's more in the area of half a second. But definitely it will be very helpful. 

“The second factor, I would say that here the grip is very low. The conditions are difficult. The car slides, it's quite unpredictable with the wind, and there's a premium on cars that have more grip and more downforce, because the car is just a little bit easier to predict. 

“There are possibly some opportunities, let me say, by exploiting more out of the power unit that we have available. And I would not mention the tyres, because I think when I look at the degradation in the race, pretty much all cars have very similar degradation. 

“Certainly, we don't have any of the advantage that we had in 2025. So even this one is an area in which we need to try and create some competitive advantage.”