(Motorsports news) McLaren’s Lando Norris won the sprint race at the Brazilian Grand Prix, finishing second to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, and same outcome repeated itself in Sunday’s race as Norris surged from sixth on the grid to second at Turn 1. But, as rival teams faded and finished more than 30 seconds behind the dominant Verstappen, who won a record 17th race of the season.

Norris was the only driver who could stay close to the Dutchman, finishing only eight seconds back after matching Red Bull’s lap timings for long stretches of the race. However, as the high-degradation race went, Norris could be seen sliding backwards throughout his stints, noting, “I’m not far behind for the first 10-15 laps in, but that final phase, I just drop off a bit too much.”

McLaren’s head Stella recognized that, despite McLaren’s great progress this season, which has developed into Red Bull’s most consistent competitor in recent months, tyre management is the one area that still distinguishes Red Bull. “I think the difference is mainly in terms of lap time on used tyres,” the Italian added. “McLaren have seen in new tyres that we can fight for position.”

“However, once the tyres degrade, it appears that Max, Red Bull, and others can simply have less degradation.” Every two laps, the tires degraded by about one-tenth. “It’s a significant amount of degradation and if you can limit that, after 10 laps in a stint, this is tenths of a second, so I think that’s where they are superior at the moment.” The team has made great strides in 2023 with its many changes, which have also helped with tyre wear, but the largest benefits on that front will have to wait until the 2024 car.

“Where we think the difference is made, we can’t do very much with this car,” she said. “We have no idea why that happened.” Even from the standpoint of Ferrari, I would have expected Ferrari to be more competitive.”

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