The Sao Paulo Grand Prix didn't end the way that McLaren had been hoping, with Max Verstappen taking a big win while Lando Norris was only P6 - effectively ending his chances of stealing the 2024 title.
But McLaren team principal Andrea Stella insists that he has no regrets and wouldn't have wanted Norris or the team as a whole to do anything different this season.
Norris only claimed his first F1 victory earlier this year in May with a win in Miami, followed by two more in Zandvoort and Singapore. But the chances of catching Verstappen in the standings were always pretty low.
“I think Lando is coping with this situation of being in the fight for the championship in a way that we are enjoying," said Stella. "He's now a very mature driver, and fast.
"The race craft keeps improving all the time," he insisted. “The attitude, the learning from every situation, which we can almost appreciate on a race-by-race timescale.
"Lando is definitely now a mature driver to succeed in this kind of fight, which is a fight against one of the best drivers, I think, in the history of F1," he added.
“Looking at the titles that Max has achieved, then I think this is universally recognized," Stella noted.
"We just keep telling Lando all the time: keep doing what we are doing, let's keep improving all the time, let's become the best version of ourselves, race after race.”
©McLaren
Verstappen's stunning run to victory last weekend in Sao Paulo, while wet contiions meant that Norris slumped to P6 having started from pole position, means there is now a gap of 62 points in the championship with three races left.
Asked whether he had told Norris to change his approach to close on-track battles with Verstappen after their recent scraps, Stella said: “Not at all.
"When I say keep doing what we are doing, I obviously mean this in a broad sense, but definitely I also mean this in a very specific sense," he explained, using the clash between the pair in Austria over the summer as an example .
“I think we got some learning, for instance, from Austria. We got a little too close. And the points we're missing from Austria, because of having had a proper collision and then being knocked out of the race, are points that we regret.
“We don't really regret many other points in this season. Potentially the one in Austin, where we still believe that the final classification isn't correct," he said, referring to the penalty that dropped Norris from third to fourth.
"We respect the work of the stewards," Stella said. "We have tried with a right of review to find some correction of that situation that happened in Austin. This didn't happen. We move on."
The official call went the other way in Mexico where Verstappen was penalized for the way he challenged Norris in the closing laps, which left Stella feeling vindicated about McLaren's approach to racing.
"Ultimately in this kind of close fight, there's a third party that is the stewarding. We trust the stewarding. I think in Mexico this worked very well and we had good racing.
"From Lando's point of view, that's the way it should be going racing. Lando reflects, in the way he goes racing, our own values. We race fair, we race in a correct way, we race in a sportsmanlike way."
Although Verstappen has all-but sealed the drivers title with his win in Sao Paulo, McLaren have a 36 point lead over Ferrari in the constructors championship with Red Bull a further 13 points behind in third.
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