Piastri finished third behind teammate Lando Norris in second, with the race won following a sublime performance by Max Verstappen.
The leading trio spent much of the 53-lap encounter running nose to tail but never close enough to attack one another.
In the closing stages, Piastri suggested to his engineer, Tom Stallard, that he had pace up his sleeve and that, if he could clear Norris, he could attack Verstappen.
While the Australian’s message was received and understood, the pit wall did not react, and he remained third to the chequered flag.
“I don’t think it is so clear that Oscar was faster,” argued Stella.
“Lando was trying to get into Max’s slipstream even closer, but anytime you went below one second then there was a significant loss of grip.
“Lando was doing a little bit of an elastic today, trying to cool down his tyres a bit and go again.
“I don’t think it is a situation that we should judge at face value in terms of what the pace of the car was.
“Lando was trying to get close to Verstappen with maximum momentum, but it was difficult.”
McLaren boasted the fastest car in Suzuka, though its margin over the pack was far less than it has been at Melbourne to Shanghai this year.
A new surface through the opening third of the lap also proved transformative with the race an easy one-stopper for every team.
This year’s McLaren has proved good on its tyres, but that was a strength nullified on Sunday.
With a significantly reduced tyre delta over the course of a stint, both Norris and Piastri were strategically limited.
That forced the pit wall to become reactive, to George Russell in particular, which in turn meant any passing had to be done on the track.
“We knew right from the start that, this track, you need seven- eight-tenths of performance advantage in order to be able to overtake,” Stella said.
“Normally, this sort of lap time difference may be generated because there is degradation in the tyres.
“But with the new tarmac, Suzuka has changed the feature of being a high degradation circuit, it’s now a very low degradation circuit.”
McLaren pitted Piastri first on Lap 20, a move made in response to Russell who had taken to the lane a lap earlier. Norris stopped next time around.
“We will review, obviously, the gaps in terms of time to understand whether there was the possibility to go for an undercut with Lando that could actually be executed on Max,” Stella explained.
“We don’t have to forget, though, that by giving up track positions, you also expose the car that you pit to Safety Car risk.
“Lando would have lost positions in a Safety Car, should a Safety Car be deployed.
“In hindsight, you don’t see any Safety Car, you don’t see anything, and you think, ‘Oh, here, I might have gone for the undercut’, but an undercut attempt comes with some risks.
“It was apparent that the degradation was low, so I think if you lose position with the Safety Car, it’s lost.
“I don’t think we could have overtaken a Ferrari or a Mercedes today.”
Equally, an overcut would have meant a net loss, with Norris likely to have fallen behind Piastri at least as fresher tyres still proved marginally faster despite the low degradation race.
“If you stay out on a 20-lap used medium you cannot be faster than somebody that fitted a hard,” Stella said.
“The situation became very clear when Russell pitted and he was very fast on a new hard. It was apparent that the hard was working well.
“The overcut works well when you know that you gain, like in Barcelona or in Suzuka in the past, you know you gain four or five laps of tyre delta,” he added.
“Then, when you pit, even if you pit behind the car that stopped before, you will pass him because you have better tyres.
“But here, the tyres don’t almost degrade at all from one lap to the other.
“Qualifying becomes very relevant when you have this type of race.”
On Saturday, Norris and Piastri qualified second and third respectively. They then exited the first corner in the same positions at the start of the race on Sunday.
From there, with only a strategically insignificant pace advantage over Verstappen, who managed his own pace to further limit strategic options, Piastri’s fate was sealed.
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