McLaren 'losing confidence' after multiple key F1 errors

Former Haas F1 team principal Guenther Steiner believes McLaren's slow pit stops at recent rounds are a result of the squad “losing confidence”.

Lando Norris was struck with a slow stop at the Italian Grand Prix last month, which cost him track position to title rival and team-mate Oscar Piastri. However, McLaren opted to rectify the situation by ordering Piastri to give the position back.

Norris suffered another slow stop at a difficult Baku race, before it was Piastri's turn to be left waiting in his pit box last time out in Singapore.

The lacklustre stops threaten to have massive repercussions on the F1 title fight between the McLaren duo with six rounds remaining.

Weighing in on the situation, Steiner believes the pit crew is struggling to cope with the pressure of the battle.

“Do you know why? Because the guys now, it's losing confidence,” he told the Red Flags podcast. “It's all about confidence.

“The pit stop is not about doing the work. It's about up here [points to his head], it’s all mental.

“If you do a bad one, the best thing is to forget about the bad one. If you focus too much on it, ‘How can we make it not happen again?’ and all that stuff, you overthink it again.

“Sometimes you just have to let it go. Shit happens and move on, because we could do it before we can do it again.”

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella suggested a hardware issue is partly to blame for the series of slow pit stops of late.

But Steiner downplayed the significance of the equipment in the situation, highlighting a minor distraction for one person on the pit crew can mean the difference between a strong pit stop and a disastrous one.

“The pit stop, you need to get the right equipment,” he said. “The equipment will be a tenth or two maximum.

“All the guys, they train it so much they can do it, and then have a consistent team, always the same people doing the same job.

“The rest is just the confidence. Then the rest, [if] he stops in the wrong place, [which] can throw you out.

“[If] he’s going a little bit longer, a little bit short, that throws you out because you have to move and you lose a little bit of time.

“But otherwise, the rest is just like repeating, the first, second, third, fourth pit stop. They should all be the same. 

“These guys are good. We are talking here, really, [in] seconds. We are not talking minutes if something goes wrong.

“Just a little move wrong, that’s normally not the focus, not the concentration, thinking about something else and you get it wrong.”