McLaren boss Stella dismisses Lewis Hamilton theory after Miami GP

At the end of the Florida weekend, Hamilton - who endured a difficult outing that culminated in contact with Franco Colapinto during the race, compromising his afternoon - suggested McLaren’s latest upgrade package had delivered a much bigger gain than initially expected.

The seven-time world champion also hinted to GPblog that Ferrari had not experienced the same level of progress from its own developments, underlining the contrasting impact the latest updates appeared to have across the grid: “I heard McLaren brought a step, but that it was worth much more than they anticipated. That’s not how we’ve experienced ours.”

McLaren, meanwhile, enjoyed a breakthrough weekend thanks to the raft of upgrades introduced on the MCL40, continuing the positive trajectory already seen in Suzuka. Lando Norris went on to claim victory in the Sprint before fighting Kimi Antonelli for the race win until the closing stages, eventually having to settle for second place.

When Hamilton’s comments were put to him, Stella pushed back against the suggestion that McLaren’s upgrades had exceeded expectations, insisting the data collected throughout the weekend matched almost perfectly with what the team had anticipated from its development tools ahead of Miami.

Speaking to media including GPblog after the race, Stella suggested the upgrades brought by several teams in Miami had slightly reshuffled the competitive order, with McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull all appearing to close the gap to Mercedes. However, the Italian stressed that single-lap performance in particular still heavily depends on execution, optimisation and how quickly teams adapt to new packages over the course of the weekend. He pointed to the contrast between McLaren’s strong Sprint Qualifying performance and their less competitive showing in main qualifying as proof of how fine the margins currently are.

Stella also dismissed the idea that McLaren’s gains were significantly bigger than expected, arguing Mercedes still appeared to hold an advantage of a couple of tenths over the rest of the field. According to him, the Silver Arrows simply failed to extract their full potential during the opening phase of the Sprint weekend, creating the impression that rivals had suddenly made a larger step forward than they actually had.