Lando Norris will start this afternoon’s race from third and Oscar Piastri sixth, while nearest rival Ferrari has Carlos Sainz fourth and Charles Leclerc only eighth.
While the Scuderia failed to fire in qualifying, its long run pace during practice did imply it could challenge Red Bull for the race win.
Stella is less sure, suggesting that practice pace was misleading.
“I suspect they might have had a little less fuel than Red Bull,” he said of the Ferrari’s Free Practice 3 long runs.
“Red Bull, they just look strong here, so I will be surprised that there is a car that is clearly faster on a long run. That’s my impression.
“This is one of the highest fuel effect [circuits] of the season,” he added.
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“If you have 10 kilograms less, it’s between three and four-tenths, so if it’s 20 kilograms, it’s already completely different.”
McLaren heads into the race with a different tyre strategy to those around it, with two sets of hards at its disposal.
That will likely see both Norris and Piastri start on the medium tyre before switching onto the white-walled rubber at the first stop.
“We think our tyre allocation, with two hard tyres, is favourable,” Stella reasoned.
“We will see [in the race] if that is a good idea or not. There’s some cars which have two mediums instead, like Ferrari, Red Bull, and Aston I think they even went five-one-one, so they will potentially start on the soft.
“We will see various scenarios,” he added.
“The tyres may be a factor but we think that, for what we’ve seen in the high fuel runs, we should be in the mix and thinking about a podium finish is not too brave.”
McLaren reached the podium with both Norris and Piastri last year, the latter’s first appearance on an F1 rostrum, on a weekend where the Woking squad clearly second best to Red Bull Racing.
This year, it has closed the gap, but so too have its rivals, muddying the picture for best of the rest honours.
“Definitely there’s an area in which we are closer, which is sector one,” Stella said of the gap to Red Bull Racing, which has reduced from 0.6s/lap last year to 0.3s/lap just six months on.
“Last year, Max was just outstanding, in his own category, I would say.
“This year it looks like we were a little closer but at the same time actually the main consideration is that Aston is closer, Mercedes is closer.
“So I think there could be two factors here; one is that everyone improved in highspeed – I would say sector one is not probably highspeed, more like medium-highspeed – compared to Red Bull.
“At the same time, Red Bull retained an advantage in terms of straight-line speed and they are also very good in all the other speeds. If you take the hairpin, they have the best car.
“From a McLaren point of view, this medium-highspeed and the esses is where we closed the gap a little.”
The Japanese Grand Prix begins at 15:00 AEST.
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