McLaren opened the door for Max Verstappen to beat them to pole position again in Miami, team principal Andrea Stella admitted.
Verstappen claimed his third pole position from the six grands prix so far this year, less than a tenth of a second ahead of Lando Norris. Oscar Piastri set the quickest time in Q2 but was unable to match it in the final round and fell to fourth on the grid behind Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
Stella admitted the team had let a chance to lock out the front row of the grid slip through their fingers.
“It’s super-close, but this year when it’s super-close, at the moment, we tend to let Max take the pole position,” he told the official F1 channel. “So definitely we have to improve from this point of view.
“I think the potential on the car today was strong from a performance point of view, but sometimes in qualifying it’s not that easy to use the full potential with our car. And today both Oscar and Lando I think left a little bit of lap time on their laps.”
Norris went too deep at turn 17 on his first run in Q3, then took too much of the apex kerb at the same corner on his final lap. His final lap matched Piastri’s best time from the previous session.
“Oscar didn’t manage to improve in Q3 [on] what was already a very strong lap in Q2, probably losing a bit of rhythm,” said Stella. “Lando was flowing very fast in both laps but he left a bit of lap time in the last corner in both attempts.
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“So still it’s a very solid qualifying session, P2 and P4 is very good for tomorrow, the car is fast in terms of race trim. So we look forward to tomorrow and I think it’s going to be a good race.”
McLaren need to do more to help their drivers feel confident in the car’s handling in qualifying, said Leclerc.
“I think in terms of absolute performance, I think our car was slightly faster than the Red Bull. But like we have seen a few times this year, it’s not necessarily the easiest car to drive at the limit.
“This is, in fairness, something that we, the team, have to improve and give our drivers a car that is slightly more predictable, especially at the front end when you push at the limits on new tyres in qualifying sessions.
“So it’s something that we have to work on at McLaren and allow Oscar and Lando to capitalise on the full performance and having to lean less on what is so marginal, whereby you have to take sometimes some margin because otherwise you can make a mistake.”
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