Andrea Stella: The Mercedes car is still faster

      Andrea Stella highlighted a critically important area where Mercedes still has an advantage over McLaren, which, in particular, allowed Kimi Antonelli to win both the Saturday qualifying in Miami and the Sunday race.

      The team from Woking brought a largely updated car to the fourth round of the season and achieved quite noticeable progress – it is no coincidence that Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri excelled in the sprint, while the reigning world champion fought for victory in the Grand Prix.

      However, the head of the McLaren team remains convinced that at this stage of the season, the fastest car remains the W17.

      "I believe there are a number of signs, different in nature, but all related to quantitative parameters, that indicate the Mercedes car is faster," Stella told RacingNews365. "I think in Saturday's qualifying we saw that Mercedes had no issues with the hybrid system's energy usage, although that was what hindered them in the sprint qualifying.

      And if we analyze the behavior of the W17 and MCL40 in corners, on average, it turns out that Mercedes is faster than McLaren. They generally handled the high-speed corners of the Miami track better – from turns 4 to 8, they noticeably gained compared to us.

      On Sunday, if we look at what happened at the end of the first segment and towards the end of the last, Antonelli first reduced the gap to Norris, and then, closer to the finish of the race, increased his advantage. I believe all these factors indicate that the Mercedes car is faster.

      Although we were slower, in the sprint qualifying, for example, our team acted perfectly, while this could not be said about Mercedes, which is why they lost several tenths compared to their potential."

      For the Canadian Grand Prix, Mercedes is preparing a whole range of technical innovations, but McLaren is also striving to maintain a high pace of modernization of the MCL40 and will present a number of improvements as well.