“Ultimately it’s what happened with Verstappen I think, in what will have been his second or third stint, maybe the third, he pushed so much but then at some stage it tailed off.
“It’s a limited budget, you have to just decide where you use it, but on a two-stop you are much more exposed if your tyres go off, then you have to stay on it – and it’s quite brutal when they go off. I think the two-stop is faster, but with some degree of risk.”
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And in terms of whether the fact that Norris found himself stuck behind Verstappen for the opening laps took more energy from the tyres in relation to Piastri, Stella took a moment to acknowledge how Piastri had progressed in comparison to the difficult weekend that the Australian faced at the same venue 12 months earlier.
The team boss explained: “Yes, you do have to use your tyres more [when behind another car], because you are following, and when you are following, aerodynamics reduces, so you have to extract from the tyres what you lose from an aerodynamic point of view, which could be easily like half a second that you extract more from the tyres, so I think, yes, more tyre consumption for Lando in the first stint.
“But overall I have to say that the two drivers today were in a way, quite surprisingly, pretty much going in parallel throughout the entire race. I think Oscar has done a really impressive job considering that last year this was one of the most difficult races for him, so he’s gone really a long way forward in 12 months.”
