Apples, pears and peaches were on the mind of Papaya boss Andrea Stella as the Italian responded to suggestions McLaren may have lost their overall advantage to Red Bull
McLaren boss Andrea Stella got in three of his five a day as he gave a fruity response to suggestions that his team has lost form. They have largely dominated the season so far, winning five of the seven Grands Prix held.
The only other team to have tasted victory is Red Bull with Max Verstappen securing his second win of the year in Imola last Sunday. The Dutchman pulled away from the McLarens with ease in his upgraded Red Bull, in stark contrast to two weeks earlier where no-one could touch Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.
But Stella refuses to accept any suggestions that things have soured for his Papaya-coloured team. “I am in disagreement with this statement,” he said, when asked why his team had underperformed at Imola.
“I think there’s a tendency to compare apples and pears. When I was at school the teacher always said, ‘Don’t compare apples and pears – make sure you are specific, analytical, precise in how you use information.
“Imola belongs to the category of tracks like Saudi Arabia and Japan. High-speed corners, narrow tracks and if we look at those circuits’ pole position, it was Red Bull. And in the race in Saudi, if it hadn’t been for the penalty for Max, Max would have won the race.
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“If we look at the pace between McLaren and Red Bull in Japan and in Saudi, for me the picture is very consistent with the picture we had in Imola. But if we compare the race in Imola with the race in Miami, we are comparing an apple with a pear, and my school teacher would grab my ear and say, ‘Don’t compare apple and pears’.
“Miami is a low-speed dominated circuit and with all the aerodynamic investment we have done, our car has improved massively in these low-speed corners. If we want to compare Miami, let’s look back at what happened in China, where the two McLarens disappeared, and Bahrain where Oscar dominated and Lando started in P6 but still he managed to recover positions.”
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So if low-speed tracks like Miami are apples and rapid circuits like Imola are pears, what is this weekend’s Monaco street venue? “This one is a peach,” Stella replied. “This one is a complete one-off. I wouldn’t be surprised if, say, Ferrari is the lead car, so we will see.
“Maybe we do a few more races and we create some better, exact categories. I’m very curious to see whether for instance Baku will be a pear or a peach, I suspect it’s a peach, so we may continue this trend.”
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His prediction looked a reasonable one by the end of yesterday’s running, which saw Charles Leclerc top the timesheets in both practice sessions. And Lewis Hamilton was third quickest in FP2, just one-tenth behind his team-mate despite Ferrari’s pre-event warnings that they would likely struggle at such a low-speed track.
They were split by Piastri who suffered a setback when he buried his front wing into the barrier during FP2. And Norris was the fourth quickest driver while Verstappen was only 10th in the order, continuing a Red Bull trend of struggling for one-lap pace on Fridays.