McLaren tease immediate employment for person who can answer intriguing Red Bull theory

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has said if he could find a person to explain how Red Bull seemingly suffered more tyre graining than other cars in Australia, he would employ them “right away”.

While Max Verstappen retired early on in the race, the Red Bull’s apparent problems with tyre life showed up in free practice, despite showing no issues with that in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

Andrea Stella: McLaren job available for person to answer Red Bull question ‘with clarity’

Pirelli brought their softest tyre compounds to Australia, and multiple cars suffered with graining during the race weekend, whereby tyres were put under enough stress to cause little bits of rubber to break away from the surface in ‘grains’, which has a similar effect for drivers like driving their car on marbles or ball bearings.

This naturally slows them down until the ‘grained’ area of the tyres clear, but Red Bull appeared to suffer more with the issue than others over the weekend.

Stella was asked if, as the fastest car on the grid, Red Bull’s graining came down to the RB20 generating more downforce than its rivals or putting its tyres under more stress as a result, but he did not have the answer at that moment.

If someone did, he said with a smile that a job was there for them at McLaren.

“I have to say that if you know somebody that has enough expertise to explain these situations with clarity, I would employ him right away,” the McLaren team principal told reporters in Melbourne.

“In Bahrain, Red Bull was the only car that comfortably used the soft tyres. But in Bahrain, you have no graining at all.

“Like, there’s no way that you’re going to grain because you don’t have enough grip to stress the tyres and strain the rubber to a point where the rubber generates the graining. That makes sense.

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“So here is a completely different regime compared to Bahrain, but still, I would say harnessing this matter from an engineering point of view and saying ‘oh, it’s very clear what we need to do on the car to be okay in Bahrain, and to be okay here.’ That’s not straightforward at all, otherwise everyone would be in a good spot, it’s really difficult.

“I think even yesterday [Saturday] in P3 when Verstappen attempted a long run, that wasn’t a good long run.

“And we took a look at his tyres at the end of the long run and they were pretty finished in 10, 15 laps, and so Red Bull did not enjoy any advantage apparently, from a tyre handling point of view in a track where tyres were very soft and graining.

“Again, for the same reason I said before, it could be that we go in a similar track and things actually behave slightly different.

“This is one of the problems that you would call non-linear, whereby you change a little bit, the conditions, and the solution changes dramatically. That’s typically what happens with tyres.”

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