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Stella said it was "unclear" whether the undercut would have worked.

"So, once, for instance, you nail the qualifying laps like Max did yesterday," Stella said, "then it gets a little bit difficult to get out of the rabbit hole."

But if the weekend was a reminder to McLaren what they are up against in the shape of Verstappen - and Stella insisted, too, that they still felt a threat from Mercedes and Ferrari, that the season was still in a "transient phase" where relative performance was dictated by circuit variability - so also were there warning signs for Red Bull.

There is a degree of irony in the fact that Alonso's race engineer at Ferrari at the time was Stella.

The sun is shining on the bungalow where the 80-year-old lives in San Diego, California with his wife of more than five decades, Stella.