How McLaren was ready to pit Norris – but Ferrari ruined its Monaco F1 plan

Having started on hard tyres, Russell switched to the medium compound during the early red flag, which forced him into managing his tyres to make it to the end. As the top four were all equipped with the harder tyres, the chasm between the two groups began to grow quickly.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella credited Ferrari’s efforts to keep the gap small enough to deny any efforts to pit, but admitted that it would have been a risk even if the pit window had remained at its zenith for a few more laps.

“The pit window might have appeared for a single lap but it would have been still a bit of a risk because, as soon as the pitstop had been just one second slower than normal, we could have ended up behind a Mercedes and then it was gone.

“Like we have seen, even if you were three seconds faster, there was no way to overtake. So I think a good job by Ferrari in avoiding that we could take the pit window and then obviously it would have been an interesting race with Lando on fresher tyres.

“But based on what I’ve seen today on overtaking, I think there was no way that even with the fresh medium we could have passed Carlos. So I don’t think it would have changed the…