Stella: The rivals worked with the rubber better than we did

      Andrea Stella worked at Ferrari for many years before McLaren, knows this team very well, and even in Melbourne he said that it should not be underestimated. And today in Shanghai, everyone witnessed Lewis Hamilton's victory in the sprint, while McLaren had difficulties working with tires.

      "I have to admit that Ferrari were very fast today, especially Lewis," said the McLaren team principal on Sky Sports. "Yesterday they rightfully won pole position, and today they won the sprint, so congratulations on their success. As I said in Australia, this is not surprising. If there was a surprise, it was that they performed worse than their capabilities in Australia.

      All in all, they were probably faster than us today, although in a race like this, if you are in the lead, then you already have a big advantage in terms of working with tires. We'll see how things go from here, but now it's very important to have a good qualification.

      I think the sprint allowed us to understand a lot. In particular, we saw that we had serious problems with the front tires, especially on Lando's car, which had to be driven in traffic. It so happened that our approach, which we applied in an attempt to reduce the effects of granulating rubber, did not work. Lando believes that he has received useful information. Hopefully, we will be able to improve, and tomorrow's race will be more competitive.

      We will try to compete for pole position – definitely, it is important. Yesterday we saw that our car is capable of showing good speed on at least one fast lap. It is already more difficult to keep a high pace on a series of laps, but all teams face these difficulties, so our task is to find the right settings, as well as the drivers must act correctly on the track.

      At the same time, we need to understand what can be done to achieve a higher pace on long series of laps. If tomorrow repeats what we saw today, when some of our rivals, including Ferrari, worked better with the front tires than we did. So we have to work hard to prepare for qualifying and the race."