McLaren Boss Concedes Pit Stop Problems Threaten Title Fight

• McLaren conceded pit stops have cost points at recent races.
• Andrea Stella said hardware and execution must both improve.
• Norris lost time in Monza and Baku after slow stops.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has identified pit stops as a crucial area for improvement after back-to-back issues hindered Lando Norris at the Italian and Azerbaijan Grands Prix.

At Monza, a slow front-left tyre change caused Norris to lose a place to teammate Oscar Piastri in the pits, sparking awkward team orders before the positions were swapped back. In Baku, a problem fitting the front-right wheel nut led to another slow stop, which Stella admitted may have cost Norris as many as two positions and four points.

“Definitely in terms of pit stops, that’s an area in which we have already concentrated our efforts,” Stella said. “As a matter of fact, we need to keep working because there’s some important performance that is available through pit stops. And we have seen that the racing, if anything, is getting tighter and tighter. So what is the impact of a pit stop now gets more and more important.”

Stella added that McLaren must make changes in both execution and hardware. “Definitely for the remainder of the season and also thinking about next year’s car, there’s work to do from a pit stop point of view — for what is the execution of the pit stop — but also the hardware such that executing a pit stop for our crew is just more straightforward and more natural. There’s still some interactions between the operator and the hardware that should be improved from a hardware point of view.”

With Norris and Piastri separated by 25 points in the drivers’ standings and Max Verstappen closing in after consecutive wins, Stella accepted the recent problems could become decisive. He confirmed the issues in Monza and Baku were not connected, but said they underline a broader need for improvement.

“No, they were different. This one [in Baku] was definitely more to do with the interaction between the operator and the gunning. But we know that from a hardware point of view, we are not optimising,” he said. “This is not because we didn’t want to, this is because you kind of learn on the way. And we know that there’s room for improvement in terms of the equipment, in terms of the hardware on the equipment and the car side, so that we can make the life a little bit easier for our pit crew.”