McLaren labels the shortening qualifying gap to Red Bull an ‘illusion’

Stella comments on Verstappen’s 9.4-second win after a 0.055 Quali gap.

McLaren labels the shortening qualifying gap to Red Bull an ‘illusion’

Max Verstappen and Lando Norris (via IMAGO)

Andrea Stella, the McLaren team principal calms down the fans who are getting excited about such a close gap to Reb Bulls in Qualifyings. After McLaren, Ferrari, and Mercedes’ heavy updates, the rival teams find themselves closer to the Red Bulls than ever before. However, he calls this closing gap to the Champions a mere ‘illusion’.

Stella believes it’s not the one-lap pace that separates Red Bull from its rivals, but the degradation. The SQ3 gap to Reb Bull was +0.055 by Charles Leclerc. McLaren’s own Lando Norris was only a tenth away from the Sprint Pole sitter. But all this closeness and beating Max Verstappen in Qualifying falls off when he picks his pace up in the races. 

YouTube video

In the team principals meeting, Stella said:

FS Video
We know that some of the cars get little grip from the soft tires, certainly McLaren, we can almost close the gap to Red Bull. Then, in the races, as soon as the tires degrade and you have less grip, you see that Red Bull can extract the real advantage from their car.

Verstappen turned his Sprint pole lead of 0.055s into a huge 9.4s victory over Lewis Hamilton. Andrea Stella thinks Red Bull’s tire advantage in the sprint qualifying was clear. He also said that he was not surprised that the Bulls had such an edge. He believes that, even if McLaren gets close to Red Bull, they’ll still struggle with the best tire and car setup.

Christian Horner comments about Red Bull’s effort to produce the best race car possible

Red Bulls team principal Christian Horner commented about his team’s hard work and dedication to providing their drivers with the best car possible. He emphasizes that it doesn’t matter if a team is closer to them in Qualifying as long as they have a true race car with an excellent pace for Sunday.

Christian Horner
Christian Horner (via Autosport)

He said that there’s always a choice to take out too much from the cars for the races or for Qualifying.

To win that sprint race today by 9.5s in 19 laps is, again, a demonstration that the car's very good on its tires.
Christian Horner said to Autosport journalist.

Everyone is now looking forward to the Austin GP where the Red Bulls start P6 and P9 respectively. This is the second of the three races scheduled in the United States this year, after Miami and Las Vegas.

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