If McLaren manages to stumble its way to a Drivers’ Championship victory in the final race of the Formula 1 season, it will not be for lack of trying to lose. Las Vegas saw McLaren intruding on Ferrari territory with a devastating double disqualification; on Sunday in Qatar, with a chance to clinch the championship for one of its drivers, the team retreated back to its old, tried-and-true method of shooting itself in the foot: baffling strategy calls.
Lando Norris entered the weekend with a 24-point lead on teammate Oscar Piastri and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who were tied in the standings. The McLaren cars consistently had the best pace across each session, and Piastri in particular finally regained his midseason form after a brutal stretch of recent performance. He topped sprint qualifying, won the sprint race, and put himself on pole position for the feature race. Norris was not nearly as consistent, but he outplaced Verstappen in the sprint, and started P2 for the feature race.
The bad news for Verstappen: He was starting P3 in a car that was performing worse on pace compared to the two McLarens ahead of him, in a version of Formula 1 where track position is king. The good news for Verstappen: There is no team worse at being the overdog than McLaren. Verstappen managed to pass Norris right at the race start, which was all the hard work he had to do on track. On Lap 7, things still weren’t looking too bad for McLaren, with Piastri running a few seconds clear of Verstappen, and Norris running a few seconds behind. Then Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg and Alpine’s Pierre Gasly made contact while fighting over P9, drawing out a safety car. Then everything went wrong.
On Lap 8, Red Bull called Verstappen into the pits, a move replicated by every other team with a car running in the points. In a baffling strategy call, McLaren didn’t pit either of its drivers before the safety car exited on Lap 11. As a result, Verstappen came out of the pits behind Norris, but on seven-lap-newer tires with a nonexistent gap. It hardly mattered what unfolded across the remaining 46 laps. Barring another safety car—which, to be overly fair to McLaren, is always a possibility—Verstappen had won the race, right then and there.
Norris was quick to question the call. “We should’ve just followed [Verstappen] in, no?” he asked his race engineer. He was correct. With a decently comfortable lead in the standings, he could afford to react to Verstappen’s moves and simply match his strategy. Meanwhile Piastri, who barely had a lead on Verstappen after the sprint race, should have been in a position to dictate the contours of the race, as its leader. If McLaren pit Piastri first and Red Bull reacted by pitting Verstappen, then, at worst, Piastri would be on the same strategy with the better car. If McLaren pit Piastri first and Red Bull chose to leave Verstappen out, then Piastri and not Verstappen would be the one in the hugely advantageous position when the safety car withdrew at the start of Lap 11. Verstappen, as it turned out, would go on from that position to win the race by a margin of nearly eight seconds, and would be joined on the podium by Red Bull’s head strategist Hannah Schmitz.
McLaren’s reluctance to throw the first punch can be easily blamed on the team’s heavy-handed attempts to manufacture fairness for its two evenly matched drivers. Fear of apparent favoritism is no doubt a contributing factor. After all, what state would the so-called Papaya Rules of Engagement be in if the team called Piastri in to pit, but not Norris? What if Norris followed Verstappen into the pits, and Piastri just stayed out there? What if they double-stacked the cars, and Norris had a slow stop? (As I and others have observed before, all of these concerns can be alleviated by establishing that the driver leading any individual race always gets first pick of strategy.)
But that excuse almost gives McLaren too much credit. Even last year, when the stakes were not on the scale of championships but rather that of single race wins, the team had an abysmal track record with strategy calls: too passive when it needed to be more aggressive, too aggressive when it could afford to be more passive. McLaren obviously has a car that can win a championship and drivers who can be, at least on alternating race weekends, championship-caliber drivers. And yet even in the moments when everything is going its way, the team’s strategy is capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Piastri, who had not put a tire wrong all weekend, finished Sunday’s race P2 and lost points to Verstappen in the Drivers’ Championship standings. Norris, who could have waltzed into the final race of the season with the Championship tidily sealed up, will be sitting on a disconcertingly slim 12-point lead, and it is only by a stroke of fortune that it was not an even slimmer margin.
On the penultimate lap of the race, Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli had a costly oversteer that allowed Norris to pass him on track. In the moment, Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase came over the radio and said, “It looks like [Antonelli] just pulled over and let Norris through.” Lambiase later spoke with Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff in the paddock, and, according to Wolff, “cleared the air.” This, however, did not stop Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko from trotting out after the race to foully declare, “It was twice that [Antonelli] more or less waved Lando by. It was so obvious.”
Due to the subsequent slew of online abuse and death threats directed toward Antonelli, who is literally 19 years old, Red Bull Racing released a statement the day after the race condemning the abuse and stating that comments implying Antonelli let Norris through were “clearly incorrect,” though failing to note who made those comments in the first place. This is in danger of becoming a tradition: The last F1 championship battle that went to the final race of the season, in 2021, was marked by online abuse, inspired in part by comments from Red Bull upper management. It’s important that the excitement of a taut championship contest be tempered by as much vitriol and nastiness as possible.
With Norris, Piastri, and Verstappen entering next weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix tied on race wins, the two points Norris gained from passing Antonelli may prove pivotal. If Norris were only leading Verstappen by a 10-point margin, then thanks to tiebreak rules, he would need a P2 finish or better in order to guarantee the championship. Now, with the margin over Verstappen at 12 points and Piastri 16 back, Norris can win it all by placing P3, in a late-season environment where the top three drivers are a clear cut above the rest. Just avoid a double DNF or a DQ and, despite everything, McLaren should turn out fine anyway. No pressure, right?
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