(Motorsports news) McLaren’s Oscar Piastri earned his second F1 podium after finishing 4.5 seconds behind the Dutchman at Losail, with Norris finishing third just one second behind his teammate. Due to worries about probable tyre failures, stint lengths were limited to 18 circuits on a single pair of tyres, essentially necessitating three pit stops in the 57-lap race.

McLaren was expected to perform well on the high downforce track, and its one-lap performance proved to be genuine, as proven by Piastri’s victory in Saturday’s 19-lap sprint from pole. However, according to team president Andrea Stella, the McLarens were able to stay closer to Verstappen across the entire Grand Prix distance because Red Bull wasn’t able to completely stretch its power.

“I think first of all the leader’s strategy is a little sub-optimal from a race time point of view, because it is the safest strategy when you add in the margin,” he remarked. “It protects you from a late safety car, so the fact that they were on a time-wasting strategy is flattering. Secondly, I’m not sure how hard they pushed. I had the impression that Max didn’t have as much on hand as he had in the past.”

While the shorter stints may have stopped Red Bull from taking use of its superior tyre management, Stella felt that McLaren also experienced improved tyre deterioration, even if the underlying reasons are not quite evident. “This was a decently flat-out race, because the stint was first and foremost prescribed in its maximum duration.” The medium and hard tyres then began to behave rationally, allowing the drivers to push.

“I expected this to be a race of controlling the tyres at some point on Friday, after we saw how the tyres were behaving.” Instead, it was a race of pushing for us, which is good. “We will see the next races whether this is because we have improved the car, and it allows us to be more gentle on the tyres and therefore have better degradation or whether it’s simply the circumstances associated with this event.”

Stella warned that McLaren’s performance could potentially have been an aberration, noting that Mercedes appeared to be on par. George Russell finished fourth despite a collision with teammate Lewis Hamilton at the start, and the Briton thought he was “on pace, if not faster, than McLaren.”

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