Andrea Stella has taken solace in the fact that a single upgrade can close a three-tenths gap, after Red Bull proved three tenths of a second quicker than McLaren at the Singapore Grand Prix.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Max Verstappen won at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, his second successive victory after triumphing at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
In doing so, Verstappen further aided Red Bull’s late-season surge and dragged the constructors’ championship fight for third into sharp focus.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Just seven points now separate McLaren and Red Bull, with the former on 339 points and the latter up to 332 after 17 rounds.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Lando Norris finished fourth in Singapore, with Oscar Piastri fifth, as Verstappen’s pace advantage went unchallenged at the front.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The RB22s outscoring McLaren by 34 points to 23 across F1’s original night race further increases the possibility of the Woking-based team slipping to fourth in the standings after back-to-back constructors’ titles.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Despite the gap to Red Bull, the McLaren team principal insisted the result in Singapore matched his expectations, pointing instead to a tightly contested campaign in which small margins have repeatedly decided who comes out on top.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“We are actually pretty much fighting with Mercedes, and even when we were winning races, we were only on pole position by a few milliseconds,” Stella told media, including RacingNews365.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“It was the case in Madrid. It was the case in Hungary. If we think about Zandvoort, during the sprint, we were not very competitive.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“So it’s not like we have had a phase in which McLaren is ahead by a long way. If anything, this was seen at times in the race. Like, Lando in Hungary was very strong; in Madrid, for a few laps he was very strong.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“But we have to say as well that when you are in the lead, like we saw with Verstappen [in Singapore], with clean air, you can manage the tyres. It sort of amplifies some strengths.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\tThe ‘ping-pong’ explained<\/p>\n
Stella went on to frame Red Bull’s current form as part of a wider pattern of swings in competitiveness that has defined the season, rather than a sign that McLaren has fallen fundamentally behind with the MCL40.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“So overall, I think there are no big surprises. It was good to see that in Singapore, we were where we expected to be,” Stella added.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“I think Verstappen and Red Bull are just taking advantage of the upgrades that they have delivered.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“And it’s what we call this season: the ping-pong. Basically, people come with upgrades, even if, like in the case of Mercedes, I understand that they have some issues themselves.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“But… they can take a little step forward, and even if [in Singapore] Red Bull were kind of dominant compared to us, they had three tenths of a second [on McLaren].\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“But three tenths of a second is a range that you can add with an upgrade.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrea Stella has taken solace in the fact that a single upgrade can close a three-tenths gap, after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":932656,"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-932655","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\/932655","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=932655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/932656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}