Never mind long corners or hot track temperatures, the hottest thing about McLaren’s MCL39 is how it can “basically make love” to another car’s “f**king exhaust pipe” without chewing up the tyres.
That’s the rather colourful assessment from Christian Horner as McLaren romped to another 1-2 at the Austrian Grand Prix, lapping everyone up and including the seventh-placed car.
‘He’s basically making love to his f**king exhaust pipe…’
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
The championship leaders lined up first and third at the Austrian Grand Prix as Lando Norris claimed pole position while a yellow flag for Pierre Gasly’s spin hampered Oscar Piastri, and also Max Verstappen, leaving him down in seventh place.
Verstappen’s race was over before it began, the reigning World Champion punted into retirement by a hit from Kimi Antonelli when the Mercedes driver locked his tyres into the braking zone at Turn 3 and could not stop.
McLaren, meanwhile, immediately went 1-2 as Piastri overtook Charles Leclerc to run behind his team-mate Norris. And behind him he stayed.
Piastri was within DRS range of Norris for most of the opening stint before Norris pitted, an impressive feat given those behind the McLaren team-mates, including the Ferraris and Mercedes’ George Russell, were managing tyre wear in lift and coast instructions.
Lap after lap, though, Piastri was able to stay on Norris’ rear wing with barely a hint of added tyre wear.
More on the Austrian Grand Prix
👉 Austrian GP driver ratings: Norris’ perfect day and Tsunoda’s latest Red Bull nightmare
👉 Austrian GP conclusions: Verstappen’s Mercedes guarantee as Russell’s words come back to bite
His biggest tyre issue was actually created by himself when he went to attack Norris on lap 20 and locked up, narrowly avoiding a collision. Piastri was left to deal with a flat spot until he pitted a few laps later.
The McLaren team-mates raced to the victory with Norris ahead of Piastri, the team-mates 20 seconds up the road from third-placed Charles Leclerc having lapped everyone up to and including seventh-placed Fernando Alonso.
The only driver in the Red Bull fold not lapped by the McLaren pairing was Liam Lawson, who was P6 for Racing Bulls. Isack Hadjar was 12th while Yuki Tsunoda, the sole surviving Red Bull driver, was P16 – lapped twice.
Asked about McLaren’s advantage at the Red Bull Ring, Red Bull team principal Horner told the media, including PlanetF1.com: “I think temperature is always one, long corners, they are particularly strong in.
“It was truly impressive. For me, I can’t see any other team being able to do it.
“When you look at how Oscar is able to run behind Lando with a car fat on fuel at the beginning of the race and he’s basically making love to his f’*king exhaust pipe for lap after lap after lap and the tyres are not dying.
“That to me, that is their advantage, that they’ve managed to create a car that really protects their tyres well and has a good balance.
“I can’t see any other car which would be able to follow that closely and not grain the front tyres or rear tyres with a lot more understeer.”
McLaren extended their advantage in the Constructors’ Championship to 417 points with second-placed Ferrari on 210. As for Red Bull, they are fourth with 162 points.
The Woking team also extended their lead in the Drivers’ standings with Piastri leading on 2016 points, 15 ahead of Norris, while Verstappen, still third, is 61 off the pace.
“McLaren, you can see how they’re racing each other, they’ve got a cushion to the rest of the field,” Horner said of the title race. “For us, we will just focus on one race at a time.
“We don’t think about the championships, we just focus on next race, Silverstone, what can we achieve there? Same as Spa, same as Budapest.
“I think this season, the buffer that they have is significant so it looks very much like a two-horse race.
“For us, we just focus on every single Grand Prix and try and grab every opportunity like we did in Imola, Montreal a couple of weeks ago we were second.
“Mercedes today, last week’s race winner, was 62 seconds behind the race winner and being caught by a Sauber, so it shows how it shifts around.”
Read next: McLaren turn down in-race Sauber request in text message exchange