McLaren F1 has two battles on the line, the drivers' title and the constructors' title.
If the team does not completely control its destiny regarding the first, Max Verstappen still having a good lead over Lando Norris, this is not the case for the 2nd. And his direct opponent has changed drastically in the space of a few races.
Indeed, Ferrari maximized its points and opportunities with two victories in a row allowing it to overtake Red Bull Racing and come back to just 29 points behind McLaren F1.
Andrea Stella, the director of the Woking team, recognizes this: “there is no more margin, no more possible error”.
“29 points with four races remaining against Ferrari and Red Bull is nothing. First of all, we are talking about Ferrari and Red Bull, the world champion team, Red Bull. Ferrari, a team that has been competing for the world championship for many years, especially recently, has a very fast car. In Formula 1, you don't really rely on that kind of margin. What you can do is stay focused on yourself, perform to the best of your potential, do the weekends, then you will really have to look at the rankings after the Abu Dhabi race. It will not be decided. Before.”
In this fight for the championship, how much more complicated has it become now that Ferrari has stepped up its effort? Because Verstappen is obviously clearly focused on Norris and doesn't particularly care whether he helps Ferrari in the process.
“The complication of Ferrari being part of this championship quest is more concrete now because of the numbers. But for us personally at McLaren we have always talked internally about Ferrari being a potential problem in terms of championship candidate because it was very clear that, especially at Monza and after, they had a very fast car.”
“They improved their top speed. They improved their downforce. And on some events, they didn't maximize what was at stake for them. For example, if we look back at Baku, I think they had the pace to win the race. And in Singapore it became more obvious, but for us it was always the case. We knew that Ferrari was in the quest for the title.
“Then obviously in the last two events, if we look at Lando's race, we lost points because of interactions with Max. It's racing. We have to take those things into account. The best thing What we can do is be as fast as possible and stay out of the firing zone. It's a joke.”
“Red Bull will always be there, Max anyway. It's a very optimistic outlook but I think we are reassured by the way these kinds of tight situations were handled in Mexico. It reassures us for the future and, At the end of the day, it's racing, it's F1. We have to accept it and do our best.”
A few weeks ago, there was a lot of talk about team instructions at McLaren. What is the situation now, given that there are only four races left? Is Lando preferred over Oscar?
“Regarding this topic, the situation has not changed much compared to some comments we made. I think we were already clear before Baku. We are chasing both championships. Lando is the driver who is competing for the drivers' championship, so it's only natural that we support him.”
“We have always said that we would do it in the spirit of our principles, which are based on integrity, sportsmanship, fairness to both drivers, and that is what we are trying to do. You have could see that in Austin and Mexico, for example, Lando had upgraded parts that were not available for both cars so we gave them to Lando and that's a way of creating support for the driver who is. fight for the championship.”
“At the same time, as part of our approach, we continue to have almost daily conversations with both drivers, because we want to ensure that if certain actions are necessary during a session, this is agreed by both drivers. two parts, because we're looking at the season, but we're also looking at the future.”
There are a lot of similarities between this year's championship and 2021 in terms of the close fight for the title. Technical controversies between the teams, psychological warfare and two drivers fighting on and off the track, wheel to wheel battles.
“Well I feel a bit of pride in the fact that now it’s McLaren that’s part of this battle.”
“2021, you know, is in the history of Formula 1. It will be there for a very, very long time for various reasons. But like I said, first of all, let me express a little pride to be here now with McLaren There is always a lot to learn from the past and in fact one thing we say internally is that we try to learn from situations without being the protagonists in those situations.
“So we're definitely looking at how this season has gone, we've even looked at whether we want to talk about some hot topics, how it's been handled between Max and Lewis, we've looked at the mutual tracking.
“For technical controversies between teams it is a normal practice, but certainly you have to pay special attention to analyzing what the competitors are doing from a technical point of view, from a sporting point of view. “
“So, yes, 2021 is a benchmark season, like many others, and we are trying to learn as much as possible.”
