For the fifth time in seven races, Lando Norris and McLaren were in contention to win a grand prix. Yet once again, through a series of mistakes and operational errors they came up short.
Norris was in no mood to take the positives, blaming himself for the decision to pit a lap later than his rivals for dry tyres, a period in which he lost a lead he never regained.
“I’m just fed up of saying I should have done better and I should have done this or could have done that,” he said of a podium that, last year, warranted a true celebration at McLaren.
“I’m just disappointed. It’s a win in Formula One. Should we have won a race today? Yes. Did we? No. I’m not going to be happy with another third place.”
The turnaround in the last year for McLaren has been remarkable. Through a rapid and sustained development path they find themselves genuine frontrunners. Yet they have failed to maximise what has been on offer. There were several decisions at Silverstone that likely cost them points and, perhaps, victory. The first was the choice to leave Oscar Piastri out on dry tyres as the rain worsened when they could have double-stacked in the pit stop.
Team principal Andrea Stella said that the team were “greedy” in leaving him out. “I think we didn’t want to assert that we would have lost time with the double-stack,” he said after the race.
“But effectively sometimes you have to be patient and accept that you’re going to lose time but just do the right thing rather than hoping that one lap more is not going to cost that much.”
Then not only did Lando Norris stay out a lap longer than rivals Hamilton and Verstappen, Stella – and Norris – says they definitely chose the wrong compound tyre (soft) for the final stint, an error caused by over deliberating.
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