“I’m a little surprised that the gap we had today is as big as we saw,” Stella said after Sunday’s Grand Prix. “I thought that we could have had an advantage from a tyre management point of view but I didn’t think that the tyre management would lead to this level of gap throughout the race.
“One of the matters that still in Formula 1 looks like it’s a little bit of a black art, which is dealing with tyres. I would say especially when it’s hot there’s another characteristic which I think works very well with our car, which is the cooling system.
“I think when it’s hot our car, you can see that is relatively closed from a bodywork point of view because there’s been also great engineering going into the cooling system. So, I think in these conditions we see the excellence of the engineering at McLaren has reached a point where it can make a difference to this kind of extent.”
READ MORE: Piastri full of praise for McLaren after ‘unbelievable’ and ‘impressive’ victory in Miami
During the early stages of the Miami Grand Prix eventual winner Piastri had to overtake Kimi Antonelli – which he did with relative ease – and Max Verstappen to climb into the lead. Verstappen made him work for the position, but Piastri did find a way through.
Norris had to pass even more cars to get to second after dropping to sixth on the opening lap, with the Briton’s bold attempt to get past polesitter Verstappen at the start failing to give him the reward he was after.
The 25-year-old conceded post race that he “paid the price” for the move and, with the benefit of hindsight, McLaren’s electric pace could have allowed him to lift at that moment and fight back later from a higher position.
