McLaren ‘definitely raised the bar’ in Barcelona – Stella

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Andrea Stella has identified that Lando Norris’ return to the podium at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix was down to McLaren’s increased focus on reliability, with the Team Principal also conceding that “there’s more to do” to improve performance. McLaren have had a rollercoaster last few rounds with the Briton – after the high of following up victory in the Miami Sprint with his first Grand Prix podium of the season, Norris endured a pair of retirements caused by poor reliability in Canada and Monaco. They were still unsure of their true spot in the pecking order when they arrived in Barcelona – a track that is typically viewed as a sturdy indicator of a team’s pace for the rest of the season – so it was a clear positive when Norris qualified fourth, albeit over three-tenths adrift of George Russell’s benchmark. He maintained position and remained close behind the second Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli, allowing him to immediately capitalise and secure third place when the Italian was forced to retire from the race. Reflecting on Norris’ smooth drive to the podium, Stella said: “[It was a] relatively calm and clean weekend from a reliability point of view. We cannot forget that in some of the previous weekends, we didn’t only have problems on Sunday, but we also had problems affecting practice. “There’s been improvement from this point of view. Reliability, I don’t want to judge it in a single race – I would like to judge it in a season and say we had a couple of sessions, but we have to build from where we were and take it one race at a time, one event at a time. “It’s good that we haven’t had any issues here in Spain. We have definitely raised the bar, the level of attention, and used situations we had in the previous races to reset and increase the standards in the way we do things. “This is McLaren, and this is also McLaren, our suppliers, and our collaboration with HPP. We need to retain these standards, the mission is very clear – we only want to think about performance, an area of performance in which we also have quite a lot to improve.” With more confidence that the MCL40 can consistently make it to the chequered flag, they can now switch their attention to taking another step towards their rivals at Mercedes and Ferrari, with the latter bringing further upgrades to Barcelona that helped Lewis Hamilton win his first Grand Prix with the team. “For us it’s good news that in these conditions, we were able to stay with Mercedes,” Stella added. “We come from a couple of events on Sunday in Canada, and then the Sunday in Monaco, where we struggled with the performance and overall competitiveness. “So it's good to see that we are there with Mercedes, but at the same time, there's a competitor, Ferrari, that were able to upgrade their car. They gained performance, and now they lean on winning races, and today they could capitalise. Definitely there's more to do with the car performance.” With both Norris and his team mate Oscar Piastri finishing in the points – the Australian had a slightly lonelier race and took P5 late on as Antonelli and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc retired – McLaren sit third in the Standings, 49 points behind the Scuderia. Stella recognised that while the result was positive on paper, it also revealed how significant the gap is in terms of performance, giving McLaren specific areas to work on ahead of Round 8 in Austria. “I think this race gives us very clear indications,” he explained. “I think these indications, in a way, are consistent with what we knew already. I think these indications are Ferrari at the moment is the car with the best chassis. “We see in the middle sector, especially in the medium-speed corner, that Ferrari is the fastest in the corners, not necessarily the fastest in the straights. We see that from a McLaren point of view, we are competitive in the high-speed corners, like in Corner 3, 9, Corner 14, but overall we struggle with grip in medium-speed and low-speed. “Very clear indications, as we knew already, that we have to add grip to the car of an aerodynamic nature, so add load onto the tyres, and then we also have to improve the way we interact with the tyres in terms of Qualifying preparation. When it comes to the first corner, for instance, we see that often in Qualifying we lose time at the start. “Then in conditions like this, in the race, we would like to reduce tyre degradation. [We have] quite a clear agenda from a performance point of view. We need to add aerodynamic performance, we need to add solutions for better tyre exploitation.” F1FacebookXInstagramYouTube© 2003-2026 Formula One World Championship Limited