McLaren believe F1's 'competitive picture has changed' after Miami GP

Following F1's return from a five-week break, McLaren appear to have made significant in-roads after a tough start to the season, amplified by a double DNS caused by separate power unit issues in Shanghai. Carrying momentum from Oscar Piastri's promising P2 in Suzuka prior to the April break, McLaren scored an impressive one-two at the Miami Sprint race, following that up with a double podium in the Grand Prix.

Speaking to media, including GPblog, after the race, team boss Stella was willing to admit that not only McLaren, but also Red Bull and Ferrari have made good progress on catching Mercedes, who have won all four races so far this season. McLaren and Red Bull brought seven upgrades to Miami, while Ferrari brought 11.

He said: “I think because of the upgrades that a large number of teams have delivered here in Miami, we have seen some changes to the competitive picture. Definitely we’ve seen McLaren, Ferrari, and Red Bull closing the gap. Over a single lap, execution is very important. We saw McLaren prevailing in sprint qualifying, but the same car was further back on the grid in qualifying, and I think this has a lot to do with execution, optimisation, and adaptation."

However, Stella was also keen to stress that he thinks Mercedes are still the clear team to beat in the pecking order, arguing that the Silver Arrows had failed to optimise their performance on Saturday, which gave McLaren the upper hand in the Sprint.

Stella added: "Mercedes still seem to possess a couple of tenths’ advantage over everyone else. This was most noticeable today in the race and also yesterday. In the first sprint phase of the weekend, for some reason Mercedes didn’t express their full potential, and it looked like others had made bigger-than-expected gains. In reality, it was probably just Mercedes not optimising their performance."

Stella then turned his attention to where McLaren fell short in Miami, arguing that when the pace gap is so close between four teams, "execution, adaptation, optimisation, they can become the decisive factor."

"While we have had a very positive weekend, I think today in the race we might have lost the possibility to win it, again for a matter of execution and optimisation of what was available," Stella said, in reference to McLaren's decision not to pit Lando Norris when he was ahead of eventual winner Antonelli on Lap 26.

It was a decision Norris admitted he was "disappointed" with, voicing his frustration in the post-race press conference: "I’m not saying we would have won the race because I think Kimi drove an excellent race and his pace was very strong, especially his pace end of stints was incredibly strong. So, he might have still passed me later on in the second stint if we boxed earlier, but at least we would have given ourselves a fighting chance, and we didn’t give that to ourselves today. So, I’m a little bit disappointed by that."