Lando Norris, what bad luck!
Two seconds. This is the gap that would have allowed Lando Norris to rightfully win the Spanish GP and start the final phase of the season with much more momentum and morale. The Virtual Safety Car regime instead decided the contest in favor of Andrea Kimi Antonelli at two different moments: on one hand because the reigning world champion could not stop at the pits as he had just passed the pit-lane entrance, on the other because on the next lap the race restarted just as the Englishman was stopped in the pit box for the tire change. A coincidence that Andrea Stella, the team principal of McLaren, does not hesitate to describe as “the mathematical definition of bad luck” in the post-GP press conference attended also by FormulaPassion.it. Despite everything, however, the Italian engineer does not blame the Race Direction for the timing of the VSC.
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Andrea Stella is not upset with the FIA Race Direction
“As in all occasions when the timing or duration of a Virtual Safety Car – he explains to us after the end of the 2026 Spanish GP – has a decisive influence, we evaluate if it was possible to act differently, but doing so is not part of the Race Director’s duties. The Race Director applies the guidelines and the regulations and I think that, when a situation like this occurs, the Race Director’s attention is rightly focused on the moment when the conditions exist to impose the VSC regime and when they exist to restart the race. I don’t think it is possible to pay attention to what is happening in the race, because that would be a big distraction. So, there is nothing to comment on regarding the Race Direction, because I think they did a good job, in light of the current rules”.
What to do to have more fairness?
However, should these rules perhaps be changed? “Maybe the F1 community should reflect on whether to keep things as they are or to introduce measures to ensure greater fairness. But I am also doubtful about what would be the right thing to do. Should we guarantee a sufficient duration so that everyone is subject to the same track conditions, for example that the VSC lasts at least a full lap, or leave the decision in the hands of the stewards, with the result that sometimes you are lucky and sometimes not? I myself am not sure, but in general there is an appropriate place to discuss this topic, namely the Sporting Advisory Committee. It is a topic that could be added to the agenda and debated”.
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Norris, was it right to stop at the pits on the next lap?
Regarding the race strategy, instead, no doubt: McLaren called Norris to the pits at the moment the Virtual Safety Car was deployed and confidently chose to stop on the next lap, despite the real risk that the race would restart: “Lando told me on the in-lap that today we were too fast. Because we were two seconds faster than we should have been to win the race, which is obviously a paradox. We considered staying on track, but you also have to accept the fact that at that point we were on relatively worn medium tires and behind us were drivers on new hard tires. Norris would never have been able to gain enough ground on those with new hards. Therefore, we had to somehow accept that this was the right thing to do”.
