McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has said Max Verstappen’s sprint pole at the United States Grand Prix confirms Red Bull has “improved” the RB21.<\/p>\n
Having been to low and high-downforce tracks in recent rounds, the medium-speed Circuit of the Americas was the final overarching track profile for the updated Red Bull to prove itself at.<\/p>\n
The upgraded floor delivered by the Milton Keynes-based squad for the Italian Grand Prix has \u2014 along with revamped internal ways of working and a revised approach to grand prix weekends \u2014\u00a0been a game-changer for the team.<\/p>\n
It has thrust Verstappen back into regular contention for victories and afforded him a long shot at a fifth-consecutive F1 drivers’ championship.<\/p>\n
Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies remarked that McLaren “killed” his team at the last medium-downforce challenge, in Zandvoort, but his McLaren adversary believes that to no longer be the case.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Sky Sports F1, Stella said: “I think this is actually a relatively genuine representation of the competitive field. It’s very close at the top.<\/p>\n
“It confirms that Red Bull have definitely improved their car. They are competitive now and can fight for victories and pole position on every kind of circuit.”<\/p>\n
Verstappen was seven-hundredths of a second faster than Norris in the leading MCL39 at COTA, but Stella was still pleased by the result.<\/p>\n
“It’s also positive to see that our car here is competitive compared to some other venues in which we struggled a little bit,” the Italian said.<\/p>\n
“So I think it’s a good result, not the result we want. We are here for pole positions, obviously, but I think it’s a good foundation for the sprint race, and also a good foundation to see where we can fine-tune a little bit of performance and give it another go at pole position [for the grand prix].”<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tReason for optimisim<\/p>\n
Stella pointed out that tyre degradation should be a factor in Texas, given the high temperatures expected throughout the weekend.<\/p>\n
He highlighted how that plays into McLaren’s hands. This will no doubt be exacerbated by tyre supplier Pirelli’s decision to have a jump in compounds between the hard and the medium rubber for just the second time this season.<\/p>\n
“I think here in Austin, we should observe more tyre degradation,” the 54-year-old suggested. “The conditions are very hot. I think we come from races where it was a little bit of a procession, because there wasn’t much tyre degradation.<\/p>\n
“I would expect here that the race or the sprint may be more entertaining, and there could be more variability based on the behaviour of the tyres.<\/p>\n
“Normally, our car is decent when there is tyre degradation. So for many reasons, including this one, we look forward to the sprint race.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has said Max Verstappen’s sprint pole at the United States Grand Prix confirms…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-223105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}