McLaren arrived in Miami with what Andrea Stella had described pre-weekend as an “entirely new” car: a substantial aerodynamic overhaul delivered across the five-week gap in the calendar.
The Sprint result backed it up as Lando Norris won the Saturday race, finishing ahead of his teammate Oscar Piastri. Then Saturday’s Grand Prix qualifying came along and reshuffled the order in ways Stella couldn’t fully explain away.
Verstappen secured his third pole of the year, just 0.065 seconds clear of Norris in second, while Kimi Antonelli put his Mercedes third on the grid to outpace Piastri. McLaren had the pace on paper. Turning it into a clean lap when it mattered most was the problem.
Wind and Power Unit Consistency
Stella’s explanation to Sky Sports F1 covers a few overlapping factors rather than a single issue. “
After Sprint Qualifying we said that actually multiple cars could have been in pole position,” he said. “Mercedes struggled with deployment, Leclerc made a couple of mistakes.”
For Grand Prix qualifying, the conditions changed and this negatively affected the papaya team. “The wind was very different,” the team boss continued. “We had a few things to manage with the power unit consistency and the drivers needed to find the rhythm and it looks like some other teams have been better than us from this point of view.”
That’s a careful way of saying McLaren’s setup didn’t react as cleanly to the change in track conditions as Red Bull’s did.
The Miami event brought rule tweaks including reduced recharge in qualifying and a +150 kW boost cap,adding another layer of power unit management that not every team handles the same way.
“The reality is because of a combination of the upgrades and track characteristics, the four teams are very close and it’s more about execution.”
Stella, to his credit, isn’t looking for sympathy. “For F1, this is very good news and we have some entertaining racing ahead of us,” he said, which is true, though it’s easier to say when your car won the Sprint and your title leads are intact. On the rain forecast for Sunday’s race, Stella is looking forward to what could be a very interesting race.
“The conditions look like they will be wet at some stage, but it’s thunder so it’s difficult to say when and how. This would can create an eventful race. We just have to adapt to the conditions, be responsive and the usual basics of racing in unpredictable situations looking at the weather. We look forward to an exciting race.”
Starting P2 and P4 with rain potentially in the mix isn’t a disaster for McLaren as the race pace has been very strong all weekend. But if the Sprint race’s lack of overtaking is going to be a factor during Sunday’s race again, it could be very difficult for his drivers to move up the pack.
