Andrea Stella has explained that Lando Norris was caught out by pyrotechnics during the podium celebrations after his São Paulo Grand Prix win, rather than his broken champagne bottle moment.
Norris claimed a dominant victory at Interlagos, crossing the line more than 14 seconds clear of Max Verstappen to take his third win of the season, and 14th of his F1 career.
But the celebrations on the rostrum took an unexpected turn. As Norris leapt off the dais, he first attempted to stoke up the champagne by hitting the bottle on the floor, only for it to smash and be left holding the neck.
The Briton then moved forward, only to be caught on the side of the head by the sparks from a sprinkler-style pyrotechnic effect firing at close range.
Later clarifying what had happened once Norris was back in the paddock, McLaren team principal Stella, speaking to media, including RacingNews365, said: "I understand that he had an incident with the pyrotechnics, not with the bottle," said Stella.
"Okay, I think the bottle didn't go well either because he seemed like he had only the upper part.
"But I think he was just surprised when he was going for the bottle. I understand that the pyrotechnics started.
"The only thing I needed to know is that he is okay."
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Stella - 'Our car is good from this point of view'
Beyond the podium mishap, Stella also used his media session to address McLaren's pace through the race, pointing to the unusually cold conditions as a key factor behind the team's tyre management in the dry.
"My explanation of our performance in the dry is associated with the track and ambient temperature," explained Stella.
"The conditions were very cold, much colder than we had in practice. In those conditions in practice, I think we saw that we were still tending to overheat the tyres.
"Somehow the conditions came our way, and we could keep the tyre temperature under control. I think that's the main reason.
"We know that we have some work to do in terms of getting more consistent in long runs in hot conditions, and I think we were in a way helped.
"You could see this well when, especially with Lando, the track was getting greasy before switching onto intermediate tyres,
"Lando was just able to keep the lap times much better than anybody else, and I think our car is good from this point of view."
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