McLaren F1 chief agrees with Max Verstappen as Red Bull hurt by FIA intervention

12 October 2023 , 08:00

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A tyre safety concern was raised at the Qatar GP (Image: HOCH ZWEI/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)

Andrea Stella agrees with Max Verstappen's assertion that the gap between him and the McLaren cars at the Qatar Grand Prix was narrowed by the FIA's mandate on tyre stints during the race.

Amid safety concerns over the tyres, which were being damaged by kerbs on the Losail track to an unexpected degree, the governing body stated that no set could be used beyond 18 laps in total.

Effectively, that forced every car to make at least three pit stops during the race. But the other major effect it had was drivers could, for the most part, drive flat-out without worrying about having to preserve tyre life.

So that went against Red Bull, for whom tyre management has been a strength this season. "The three stop that was mandatory was not ideal for us, personally, because our car is good on tyres, as you need to do longer stints because that's the fastest way around here," said Verstappen after the race.

"It was the same for everyone at the end that we had to do those stops. We had to deal with that, and it made it probably a bit harder to drive. We had to push quite hard out there, and as you could see, after the race, a lot of people are quite tired."

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So Verstappen feels the gap between him and the chasing McLarens behind was made to look much smaller by the fact tyre degradation was much less of a factor. He was less than five seconds ahead of Oscar Piastri on the road as he took the chequered flag.

And McLaren agree with that assessment. Team principal Stella admitted that the performance of their cars was flattered by the shorter tyre stints.

"I think, first of all, the leader's strategy is a little sub-optimal from a race time point of view, because it is the safest strategy when you add in the margin," said the Italian. "It protects you from a late safety car, so there is a flattering element in the fact that they were on a strategy that loses time.

"This was a decently flat-out race, because the duration of the stint first of all was prescribed in its maximum duration. Then, the medium and the hard tyres were actually behaving in a sensible way, so they were allowing the drivers to push. I was expecting at some stage of Friday, after we saw how the tyres were behaving, that this would have been a race of controlling the tyres.

"Instead, for us at least it was a race of pushing and this is encouraging. We will see the next races whether this is because we have improved the car, and it allows us to be more gentle on the tyres and therefore have better degradation or whether it's simply the circumstances associated with this event."

Daniel Moxon