McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella has outlined how they can improve going forward this season.
Speaking about his team’s performance last time out in Japan to F1.com, he said: “I think, first of all, without the variability introduced by the start of the grid, we would have seen a slightly more predictable race.
“I think if the Mercedes are on the lead, they just disappear. We have seen with the lead of Kimi after the Safety Car. In general, I think what has happened here compared to other races, well, first of all, McLaren wasn’t in the race.
“We can take advantage of the better exploitation of the power unit, which allowed us to be closer in Qualifying, and I think allowed us to be closer to Ferrari and Mercedes in the race as well. I think here with Ferrari we were on par.
“When we look at the overlays in the race, you can see that Ferrari still retains some advantage in the corners. Definitely their car is able to generate more grip than our car. I think we benefit from a power unit that overall is more competitive. HPP [Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains], from this point of view, have done a really good job in terms of the overall competitiveness of the power unit.
“One more factor is that here in Suzuka there was no graining. In the previous races, like Australia and the Sprint in China, I think we have seen that when there is a front graining, we seem to be slightly more susceptible to this phenomenon on the tyres than Ferrari and Mercedes. So, there is a combination of factors that allowed us to stay in the race today.”