Motorsports
McLaren: “Our goal was Verstappen and victory in Brazil”
McLaren had realistic hopes of winning on equal terms against Red Bull and Max Verstappen in Sunday’s Interlago race, the team’s race director Andrea Stella admitted.
The Woking team of Lando Norris and the MCL60 car came closer to the Brazilian GP last Sunday than any other team this year – except the Singapore GP – and beat Max Verstappen and the Red Bull RB19 on equal terms.
He didn’t make it, but on Saturday in the sprint qualifying test – where Norris took pole position ahead of Verstappen – the MCL60 showed that it has the speed, and on Sunday at race pace it also showed that it has the RB19 in the Tire management was extremely good. But not nearly as good as Red Bull, which took its 19th win in 20 races this year.
Andrea Stella, team principal, said McLaren had given their all in the battle with Verstappen and their goal was to win the race in Sao Paulo – where Norris finished eight seconds behind Verstappen.
“There is no doubt that we wanted to win from our own approach, especially after the red flag.” Stella said. “That’s how we put it [επαν]We started with our best set of soft rubber and decided to start with a new set to try and take the lead in the race.
From then on we hoped to put Verstappen in an unusual situation and see what we could do, making up some time in the pits and so on. We couldn’t take the lead at the start, even though we were very close on the track.”
The Italian added: “After that, our tires started to overheat. We had to make sure we kept the pace we were aiming for because Alonso wasn’t that far behind. It looked like he could stay close to us, but we definitely tried too hard in the first half stint (ss: until the first pit stop).
And then Verstappen had enough of a lead to bring the situation under control. Each time we tried to get close to him, doing some of our fast laps in second place Sleight of hand, he responded with a few majestic rounds. After the first Sleight of hand, so we couldn’t do much.”concluded Andrea Stella.
We remind you that RBR director Christian Horner also admitted that RBR did not hide its true speed at Interlago: “No, that was a normal game. We didn’t protect anything. “They put us under pressure.”said the Brit, looking at McLaren.
Source: sport 24
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