It's interesting how people change their minds about McLaren's pace as the race progresses.
It's no surprise that McLaren performs worse with softer sets of tires and well with harder ones. I’m very happy for the team; today we scored 30 points.
In general, I expected that Lando would lose medium on the tires, but I didn’t expect that he would add in the end of the race. It was nice. Yes, it seemed that Ferrari had better preserved Hard tires and that Norris would begin to lose ground, fortunately, the service life of the tires was very large.
The team implemented the strategy and timing of the pit entry well. Oscar managed to win back one position, which can be considered good at Imola. Perhaps Max attacked very strongly at the beginning of the segment on Hard tires. Horner said the tires were losing temperature and that was affecting the traction on the asphalt. That is, now we can draw the first conclusions that Red Bull is still working more carefully with tires and does not overheat them.
Lando, in turn, suffered a little on the Medium, but did not experience problems with the Hard tires. I think when he said on the radio that he had no pace, it was just an eye-catcher to confuse Ferrari's strategists. At the same moment, both Ferraris increased their pace and killed their tires. Has McLaren really learned to play mentally against Ferrari? In Australia and Japan, Ferrari were stronger in this component and were able to outwit McLaren.
I’m very happy for the team, happy for Lando and Oscar. Strong race, high pace, low degradation of Hard C3 tires.