Andrea Stella has admitted McLaren "did not consider" starting Lando Norris on the soft tyres at the United States Grand Prix.
Like the vast majority of the top 10, the British driver had a set of medium-compound Pirellis strapped to his car for the first stint at the Circuit of the Americas, where he lined up second, between polesitter Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc in third.
The one outlier, however, was the Ferrari driver, who opted for the red-walled soft tyres. The decision instantly paid dividends, with the Monegasque driver beating Norris through the first corner.
It set the McLaren up for a race-long battle to get past and reclaim his starting position, with Leclerc putting on a defensive masterclass to keep the MCL39 at bay.
Norris eventually found a way around the SF-25 in the closing stages, but it effectively ruined any chance of him taking the fight to the Red Bull at the front of the field.
Reflecting on the grand prix and Norris' second-place finish, Stella told media, including RacingNews365: "Honestly, it worked well for Leclerc. Well done to Ferrari.
"I think this was a good way of keeping them in contention for finishing second.
"We did not consider that. We were a little surprised to see Ferrari starting on soft.
"I think most of the grid will have been surprised, because Leclerc was one of the few cars in the top 10 — I think the only one — starting on soft."
Had McLaren rolled the dice in the same way as the Scuderia, it could have held Leclerc off — or even allowed Norris to challenge Verstappen for the lead.
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Having seen both Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri wiped out at the start of the sprint, the Woking-based squad was deprived of valuable race data, which would have helped the team better understand the strategic landscape of the 56-lap grand prix.
Stella conceded that having Norris' afternoon dictated by Leclerc "cost" McLaren, with Max Verstappen further eroding his F1 drivers' championship deficit.
With five rounds — and two sprints — remaining, he is now just 40 points behind Piastri and only 26 adrift of Norris.
"We were not even sure that a medium-soft could have been a feasible one stop, so we just discovered the through race, what the strategy should have been," Stella explained.
"We saw very early that the hard tyre wasn't a good tyre, because people were coming off the hard tyre, and therefore it looked like the medium-soft was a possibility.
"So, in this sense, I think Ferrari had done a good job of anticipating that starting on soft was a good idea.
"Unfortunately for us, it cost us that Lando's race was determined by Leclerc's pace, because he followed all the way, rather than by our overall pace."
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