McLaren Formula 1 team principal Andrea Stella is a great communicator, and his dealings with the media give some indication of just how good he must be as a people manager both at the track and back at the factory.

In Monaco he was asked if there was an explanation as to why the team hadn’t done as well as expected in Imola, given how strong the performance was at the previous race in Miami.

He made the point that the Florida track was not a good point of comparison, and that in fact Suzuka and Jeddah – where Max Verstappen and Red Bull had the edge – gave a better indication of Imola form.

To ram his point home Stella went back to his schooldays, quoted his teacher, and conjured up images of an Italian fruit and veg stall. And it all made perfect sense.

“I am in disagreement with this statement,” he said of the Miami/Imola form drop-off. “I think there’s a tendency to compare apples and pears.

“Like when I was at school, the teacher always said, ‘Don’t compare apples and pears. Make sure you are specific, analytical, precise in how you use information.’

“Imola belongs to the category of Saudi, Japan, high-speed corners, narrow tracks. And if we look at those circuits, pole position was Red Bull. And in the race in Saudi, if it wasn’t for the penalty of Max, Max would have won the race.

“And if we look at the pace between McLaren and Red Bull in Japan, in Saudi, for me, the picture is very consistent with the picture we had in Imola. And if we look at the gap between McLaren and Mercedes and Ferrari, the picture is very consistent with what we had in Imola.

“If we compare the race in Imola with the race in Miami, we are comparing an apple with a pear. My teacher at school would really take my ear and say, Don’t compare apples and pears, be specific, be analytical, be precise.”

The bottom line is that Red Bull camp has been good at positioning Verstappen as the underdog, when in Stella’s view the RB21 has had the edge at certain tracks, while McLaren has set the pace at others.

“Miami is a low-speed dominated circuit,” he said. “And with all the investment we have done from an aerodynamic development point of view, our car has improved massively in these low-speed corners.

“So we want to compare Miami, let’s look back at China. What happened in China? The two McLarens disappeared, P1, P2. We want to compare in Bahrain, a low-speed circuit. Oscar dominated the race, Lando started P6 with the penalty from the grid, and still he managed to recover positions.

“So if we compare the circuits that belong to the apple and the circuits that belong to the pears, I think you can derive your own implications in terms of where the factual assessment from a technical point of view is.

“F1 is a technical business, but obviously some people are good at dropping baits here and there, moving away from the technical facts. It’s up to you to take the bait, let me say.”

So what then of Monaco this weekend?

“This one is a peach! This one is a completely one-off. And in this peach category, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ferrari is the lead car. So we will see. Maybe we do a few more races and we create some better categories.

“I’m very curious to see where, for instance, Baku will be up here will be a pear or a peach. I suspect it’s a peach. Yeah, so we may continue this thread…