McLaren were dealt a significant blow to their Championship hopes at qualifying for the Mexican GP. According to Andrea Stella, unforced errors from Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri prevented the team from fulfilling its potential.
Damage limitation for McLaren in Mexico
Qualifying in Mexico dealt serious blows to McLaren’s title aspirations, both in the drivers and constructors’ standings.
The first setback came in Q1, when Oscar Piastri went wide and invalidated his flying lap. Without time to change for fresh softs, the Australian set another lap on worn tyres – lacking the grip to set a sufficient time.
This provided a golden opportunity for Ferrari to capitalise. Fred Vasseur’s team did so, securing P1 and P4 grid slots for Sunday’s race and a golden opportunity to cut McLaren’s advantage in the standings.
However, per team principal Andrea Stella, Norris also failed to optimise the MCL38’s potential:
“I would say the car during this qualifying session was competitive, and was in a condition to take Pole Position,” he told Sky Sports.
“Even though Carlos in the final session kind of raised the bar quite a bit.
“If we take the natural progression, then with Lando we might have been there. But we have to say that the two laps in Q3, they weren’t great.
“In the first one, there were a couple of mistakes – these overheated the tyres and then the tyres were going away from Lando…
“So we’re all encouraged that the car was performing well.
“But at the same time, from an execution point of view, we left a little bit of performance behind.
“Especially with Oscar in Q1, where he had the lap time deleted and he missed it.”
A perfect storm is beginning to significantly damage the final part of McLaren’s 2024 campaign.
As evidenced in qualifying, the operational mistakes and driver errors that have caused the team to drop points throughout the season are still present.
Perhaps more concerningly for McLaren, the Woking-based outfit no longer enjoys the performance advantage it once had.
Ferrari and Red Bull have bridged the gap to the MCL38 – making it difficult for the British squad to compensate from their previous blunders.
