A late caution period triggered by Kevin Magnussen’s stranded Haas initially brought out a virtual safety car, which prompted the leaders to head for the pits.
At the time, with second-placed Norris around nine seconds adrift of race leader Max Verstappen who seemed out of touch, McLaren felt that the safer option was to switch Norris to hards rather than take unnecessary risks and go on to used softs.
When race control switched the VSC to a full safety car period, the potential for Norris to fight Verstappen for the win suddenly emerged, as well as the requirement for him to protect his position at the restart. Those factors meant it made more sense to go for the softs.
But the timing of that safety car call, just as Norris came in to the pits with the hard tyres ready in position, came too late for McLaren to feel it was safe enough to switch to softs.
Speaking about the call to go on hards, with the cars around Norris all on softs, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella explained it was all down to timing.
“Under the virtual safety car, we were happy to go on hard tyres because it wouldn't have been a problem in terms of warm up,” he said.
“But then the virtual safety car was converted into a safety car when we were pitting, and everything was [ready] at the pitstop to put hard tyres on. A last-minute change to soft would have been an operational problem.”
Source: Autosport