McLaren team principal Andrea Stella says the fact his drivers qualified so close together at Silverstone shows there was little more performance to be found from their car.
Oscar Piastri beat Lando Norris by just one hundredth of a second. But the two drivers were out-qualified by Max Verstappen, who put his Red Bull on pole position by a tenth of a second.
Stella said Piastri was unsure where he could improve his lap time after his first run in the final stage of qualifying. “I think Oscar put together a very competitive first attempt in Q3,” he explained. “He even said in the comments ‘I was scratching my head as where I can go faster with the second attempt’.”
Piastri’s attempts to improve his lap time were also compromised by the damage his car’s floor sustained on his first run. “He did try hard in the second attempt and he lost time because the lap time was not coming together very well,” said Stella.
“At the same time, the car was a little bit damaged and there was degradation of the aerodynamic performance. So considering that Oscar possibly might have ‘over-pushed’ a little bit in a couple of places and also, the fact that the aerodynamic efficiency reduced because of the damage, I think for Oscar after there was not much chance to improve the second attempt.”
Norris did improve on his final run but narrowly failed to out-qualify Piastri. “The lap time that Lando put together, which was very, very close to Oscar in the second attempt, I think it proves that pretty much the level that was achieved by our two drivers today was a little bit of a ceiling in terms of what the car was capable of today,” said Stella. “And both drivers were happy with their driving performance in qualifying.”
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