Andrea, perhaps we could start with you if we may. It's turning into an incredible season for McLaren. Ten wins from 13 races so far. Now you've been involved in dominant seasons before in Formula 1, with Ferrari. What stands this one apart?
Andrea Stella: Well, it's always difficult to compare across seasons. In this case, we are comparing across teams, and even myself, I was in a very different role, so my field of view, my perspective was very different. But if I had to pick a couple of features of the journey that is happening here at McLaren, I would say the rate of progress that we have had in a couple of years is in itself pretty unique, and possibly the rate of progress itself was even faster than what we experienced at Ferrari in the very competitive times. The second one is that there are no superstars. It's like a proper team journey, and this includes even the drivers. So, I would say these are the two main features that are peculiar of the journey that we are having at McLaren right now.
And have you been surprised by your domination this year?
AS: Yes. I've been surprised by this level of competitiveness. When last year we discussed how much effort we wanted to put in improving the 2024 car, we definitely wanted to be very ambitious. We wanted to try and clear the "going into race weekends and you never know who's going to win" situation we had last year, and we thought we needed to do a little bit more than the normal development. So how do we do that? We embraced a very aggressive approach to innovation. The MCL39 is a very innovative car. From an engineering point of view, we've been nervous as to whether some solutions whether we were actually in the condition to deliver them. But then when we looked at the lap times and the numbers in simulations, actually, we thought that wouldn't be enough. At the start of the season, effectively it wasn't enough. So, there's a factor that has happened during this season, which is the car has actually been upgraded. I think it was more noticeable in the past because we were coming with one-off upgrades, and they were in themselves very noticeable. But actually, even if we consider the last three, four races, there's been quite a lot of new parts that have been added. If we add all these in a single incidence, then we would say, "Oh, McLaren has a big upgrade." So, I think this has helped a lot in creating this trend and finding that in the last three races, we were definitely very competitive.
Talk about the drivers briefly. It looks like a two-horse race between Oscar and Lando. First of all, do you agree with that?
AS: Definitely not. I only agree with mathematics. So once mathematics tells us that's the case, then I'll change my answer.
Well, between the two of them, there's very little separating them. What do you think it's going to come down to in the latter stages of this season?
AS: First of all, we need to make sure that we as a team only play a positive part, and the positive part is to give Lando and Oscar a fast car, a car that in all conditions can fight for the win. We don't play a role instead in which we have reliability factors, operational problems, pit stops that may bias the allocation of points one way or the other. This is the responsibility of the team. When it comes to Lando and Oscar, I think this is very much to do with the execution because they are very close, and it's a matter of details in the execution from all points of view: race craft, driving, penalties, and then consistency. Consistency - just being good at every single event - is something that Lando and Oscar have been very good at, but I think this is going to be more and more important, especially as the finish line gets closer and closer.
Andrea, thank you very much for that. Mario, can we come to you now? Throw it back to Spa, first of all, and Pirelli's decision to skip dry compounds there. Did it work? What did you think?
Mario Isola: It's difficult to come to a conclusion for Spa where we had the weather that was not helping at all. But I believe the idea was good, and that's why we decided to have the same approach for Texas and Mexico where we skip a compound between Hard and Medium. Basically, the target is always the same: to have a variation in strategies and to have teams planning a one-stop or two-stop, so different approaches to the race. We made some simulations, and we believe that creating a bigger gap between the Hard and the Medium means that if one team wants to use the Hard and target a one-stop race, they are penalised by a slower tyre, while if a team wants to be aggressive, but that means moving to a two-stop strategy, at that time you can use using the Medium and the Soft that are faster. So, this is the approach. For Mexico and Austin, we believe we can try this solution again.
Can you elaborate on that, because you announced the compounds for the rest of the season this morning. Why did you choose Austin and Mexico specifically?
MI: Because of the simulation we were running with our modelling department that is telling us the two-stop strategy is slightly quicker than the one-stop. Usually, if you have a one-stop and two-stop that are very close in terms of total race time, the teams choose a one-stop. They don't want to take a risk of an additional pit stop, traffic or a mistake during the stop. So, they move in a natural way towards a one-stop race. That means in Mexico and Texas we have a simulation telling us the two-stop is a few seconds quicker. In some other races, we have also decided to change the allocation: we go softer in Baku, we go softer in Zandvoort without skipping one compound, just moving one step softer, while we decided to go one step harder in Brazil, because last year Brazil was with the C3, C4 and C5, and the C5 was not used during the race. The target is to have all three compounds suitable for the race, not just two out of three. With Brazil, we want to come back one step.
Mario, thank you for that. Alan, thank you for waiting. Great to have you back in the FIA press conference. Good to see you. Can we start by talking about the car? It seems to be in a very good place at the moment. What are its standout qualities?
Alan Permane: Much has been made of it being an easy car to drive. A lot of people have spoken about that and they see how the drivers cope with it. But actually, what I think it is, is that it's an easy car for the engineers to get in the optimum window aerodynamically. We can do what we need to do with the setup and extract the most from it, which just gives us performance.
And is there a corner type that it suits the best? Looking at FP1 this morning, you looked very well suited to me.
AP: Honestly, yeah. It worked well in Spa, it's worked well here, it's worked well at a range of tracks. Barcelona, it really was great. Austria was very good. No, it seems pretty happy anywhere.
Let's talk drivers. Liam Lawson's drive in Spa you said was near perfect. Can you tell us about the journey he's been on with you since the third race and how he's managed to transform himself from a guy fighting for his career to delivering the kind of performance we saw last weekend?
AP: Yeah. He's done a great job, honestly. Two races at Red Bull, obviously, were very tough for him. He won't thank me for saying this, but he definitely was a bit downbeat. He didn't have a spring in his step, and we've done what we can to help him there. To jump in our car straight away without having tested it was, of course, not easy. He's up against Isack who has been outstanding this year. First race for him was Japan and Isack was absolutely flying there. So, it's a tough introduction for him, but we've made some changes. He's worked hard. Him and his engineering team have worked really, really hard. We had a bit of a breakthrough in Austria. We had a new front suspension for him, which they developed through the simulator, and he really liked it, was really enthusiastic about it, and it worked there. We saw last week in Spa again, he's performing. You could see after that race... Monaco was a decent race for him, but Austria, he had a spring back in his step.
Very last one for me. You mentioned Isack being outstanding. He said yesterday he needs to celebrate his successes more. Do you agree with him?
AP: I would say he's a driver that when things aren't going well or when he's missing a bit to the other driver or the other car is a bit quicker, the first thing he does is look at himself. I think that's a strength. Sometimes if he's not performing, he may be a little bit unhappy, but he's focusing, he's working hard. He doesn't instantly point his fingers at the car or in Mario's direction. The first thing he does is ask, "What can I do better?" It won't hurt to be cheerful, and that lifts the team as well, but he's working hard.
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