Stella rues 'missed opportunity' in Red Bull pursuit

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has rued what he felt was a "significant missed opportunity" to further eat into Red Bull's F1 championship advantage.

The Woking-based team had the quickest package in the Dutch Grand Prix which Lando Norris utilised to win by 22.9s – the biggest margin of victory this season. 

Team-mate Oscar Piastri started third but was overtaken by George Russell at the start. Although Piastri regained the position, he was later undercut by Charles Leclerc and remained stuck in fourth following the pit stops. 

Leclerc vehemently defended P3 against Piastri for the second half of the Dutch GP, stopping the McLaren driver from pursuing Max Verstappen for second.

It left Stella frustrated, despite Norris' victory, as the team boss recognised a chance was lost to gain further ground on Red Bull in the constructors' standings. There are 30 points between the teams going into this weekend's Italian Grand Prix. 

"The end result, it did cost us," Stella told media including RacingNews365.

"Because I think if, with Oscar, we had not lost the position [to Russell], it would have been a different race. Oscar had the pace to beat Max. So it's a significant missed opportunity. 

"At the same time, we approach this like any other opportunity we have, be it human performance, team performance or car performance. 

"There's an analysis, review, and then we see what factors we have under our control that we have to improve."

McLaren poor starts

The cause of Piastri being overtaken by Russell on the opening lap was a bad start, which has become an unwanted theme recently for McLaren as Norris has also encountered problems, as was the case at Zandvoort where the Briton was on pole but he lost out to Verstappen off the line.

Stella is now demanding the Woking-based outfit get on top of the problem. 

"The start is such a fundamental element to go racing, it's as important as car performance," insisted Stella. "And we do have to look very carefully into the details about why our competitors seem to gain a little bit on us. 

"I think statistically over the course of the season, we are competitive from a launch point of view. But we see that there are some cars, like Verstappen for instance, that seem to be performing very well at the start. 

"If you can capitalise on a good qualifying performance with a good start, it makes your life so much easier. So definitely, we have to look into this. 

"And as I've already said, this comes from the driver in terms of their launch, the launch procedure execution, and it comes from a team point of view, because there are some aspects which are under the team's control, and we need to look into what kind of optimisation we are able to do."