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Belgian Grand Prix: Race team notes - McLaren

NEWS STORY
27/07/2025

Oscar Piastri: "It's a great feeling to win one of my favourite races.

"I knew Lap One was probably my best chance of winning, so I committed and managed to make it work, which I am proud of. We then managed the rest of the race really well. I struggled a bit towards the end of the Medium, but I felt we had it under control. Thank you to the team for giving us a great car this weekend. I'm excited for Hungary."

Lando Norris: "A good result for the team and another one-two, our first here this century so it's nice to bring that back to the team. There are plenty of positives I can take from my race, and I'll review everything with my engineers before we head to Hungary. Overall, a well-deserved result for everyone involved and a solid performance for the whole team all weekend."

Andrea Stella: "A brilliant 1-2 finish to complete a very strong weekend for the team with consistent performances in every session. This confirms that our car is able to perform at a circuit with the characteristics of Spa and also achieves our first 1-2 at the track since 1999.

"Oscar and Lando both drove impressive races in very difficult, changing conditions. Once the track had dried up, Oscar went with the Medium tyre while Lando wanted to deviate, going onto Hard tyres which is fair racing. At the time Lando seemed to be in a strong position, but Oscar managed to get the Medium to survive until the end and secured a deserved victory.

"Thank you to everyone who made today's result possible, to the entire team both at track and the factory for their incredible work to deliver upgrades that worked very well on the MCL39. We now turn our attention to Hungary as we look to finish the final double-header before the summer break with another strong result, challenging for victory."

Check out our Sunday gallery from Spa here.

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1. Posted by Mad Matt, 21 hours ago

"Agree on the "mum exposure" thing.... and while on that topic I don't want to see cuts to would be celebrities during the coverage, especially when there's racing to see... quite honestly I'd rather see images of paint drying.

If I were the opposite of @kenji I'd probably complain that McLatern gave Oscar the favoured pit stop, should have double stacked, deliberately took their time in his pit stop, screwed up his battery deployment all to favour their favourite... sorry for my sense of humour :-)

In reality Lando paid the price for a small mistake at La Source but even without that, as we saw from the sprint race, a quality driver behind is likely to get the slip stream and take the place in any case.

Overall a bit of a boring race thanks to not starting soon enough and apart from Leiws the most fun was watching Lando trying to make the hard tyre strategy work... but as @Kenji says even that was ruined in the Sky coverage by Crofty trying to calculate what might have happened if Lando had done X or hadn't done Y and screwing it up!

In short, well done Oscar for a good pass and a steady drive and bad luck Lando but appreciate that you did at least put in the effort to try and make it a race even if it was never really on."

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2. Posted by kenji, 22 hours ago

"@Editor....Haha ' agree with me' !!! You are just TOO kind Ed."

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3. Posted by Editor, 28/07/2025 9:11

"Re: Finally could someone arrange for Norris's mum to be given limited exposure as I'm sick of seeing her frantically framing love hearts for the cameras!!!

Hard to believe but for once I agree with Kenji... please, make it stop."

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4. Posted by kenji, 28/07/2025 7:02

"Apologies for failing to state that the 'battery level' data request was made during the Sprint race and not the main race on Sunday. Mea culpa."

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5. Posted by kenji, 28/07/2025 6:55

"Cold and wet. Up until 3.00am! At least the result was worth waiting for as Oscar leveraged some worthy redemption for the Silverstone travesty. He drove a calculated race and his stunning start. The sheer speed through a wet Eau Rouge was breathtaking given the conditions were extremely dangerous. WOW. That set the tone. What was extremely annoying was the endless repetition of Norris's errors and miscalculations by Croft et al, during the race broadcast, in an attempt to in some way ameliorate his failure to match and race Piastri. I must admit that I questioned the race tactics employed by McLaren in their tyre choices for both drivers. After the Sprint race I felt as though McLaren were once again surreptitiously working the system again to favor Norris. I don't know whether anyone else noticed but McLaren passed on details of Piastri's battery capacity when asked for by Norris! It's all very well to analyse each others data post race, but to hand a competitor [ that's what a team mate actually is ] important data pertaining to the other side of the garage to allow for a possible concerted attack when that driver is somewhat limited in defense is, IMO, sneaky and unsporting.

Overall the race was somewhat lacklustre but better than no race! Finally could someone arrange for Norris's mum to be given limited exposure as I'm sick of seeing her frantically framing love hearts for the cameras!!! How saccharine can it get? Seeing family support is always good but it needs to be carefully crafted into the narrative. I mean who could possibly forget Perez's father.....at Mexican GP? Finally, the pre race grid walk with Brundle and Rosberg was quite entertaining and Rosberg's attempt to elicit a response from Verstappen senior re his part in facilitating the Horner downfall was welcome. Witnessing Verstappen's attempt to shut it down was telling! Rosberg can be annoying sometimes but he's not afraid to tackle the thorny issues full frontal. Am now looking forward to Hungary and the continued tussle for supremacy at McLaren. "

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