McLaren closes gap to Mercedes but execution costs Lando Norris victory in F1 Miami GP. Andrea Stella explains how McLaren lost a potential Miami Grand Prix victory for Lando Norris.

McLaren really was the fastest car on track in Miami? The answer is no, but the British team could still have secured its first victory of the season without external help. It ultimately came down to “execution”, the same factor that had made the difference in qualifying and the sprint race in favour of the papaya team.

“I think Mercedes still had a couple of tenths in hand,” said Andrea Stella at the end of the weekend. “In the race this became quite clear. In the first part of the weekend (qualifying and sprint race), Mercedes did not fully express its potential, which made it look like its direct rivals had made more progress than expected. In reality, it was simply Mercedes not optimising its performance.”

There is, however, no doubt that McLaren was the team that showed the biggest step forward in Miami. While Mercedes continued its winning streak by securing a fourth victory of the season, the margins remained extremely tight both in qualifying and in the race.

The sharp reduction of the gap seen in Florida brought execution into the spotlight, meaning all those variables that become crucial when performance is closely matched: setup choices, strategy calls, starts, and pit stops.

“Even though it was a very positive weekend for us,” Andrea Stella continued, “we probably lost the chance to win the race precisely because of execution. We were fighting against a faster car, but if we had managed to keep Lando in the lead, we could have won.”

The team principal was referring to the pit stop phase. Norris was leading the race when Mercedes decided to bring Antonelli in on lap 26. The undercut was not considered particularly powerful at the Miami circuit, and McLaren called Lando into the pits one lap later.

The tyre change, however, lasted one second longer than usual — a very small margin, but one that proved decisive, as it cost Norris the race lead.

“When you are leading in the final laps of the first stint,” admitted Stella, “you have a real chance of winning the race. The timing of the pit stop was crucial, but it is not only a strategic matter. We also lost time in the pit lane, and that alone is an execution issue. It is a combination of when the driver was called in, the pit stop itself, and also the in-lap, where Lando lost time. It is not just strategy, it is a team element. As a team, we did a great job in bringing McLaren back into a position to fight for victory, but today we did not maximise the result, even though we were up against a faster car.”

Norris had around thirty laps to try to recover the lead, but Antonelli never really gave him a proper opportunity. “On hard tyres it is very difficult to recover positions, and it would probably have been the same even if Lando had come out ahead of Antonelli.

At that stage, Kimi had warm tyres and was on the ideal racing line. Lando would likely have needed around seven-tenths of a second advantage to stay ahead, but once we saw that the pit stop was not perfect and that the in-lap was not ideal, we understood it would be very difficult. It was a combination of factors that prevented us from fighting for the win until the end.”