“We have to be realistic too. We’re in this fight because of other people’s mistakes, and when you look at the season as a whole, not because of anything we did.”
Max Verstappen’s words on Thursday night feel even more poignant in the aftermath of the Qatar Grand Prix, where he beat both McLaren drivers to victory, or more accurately, McLaren beat itself.
The race was for Oscar Piastri’s side of the garage to win. Despite a good start from pole position and the Dutchman leapfrogging Lando Norris into second place, there was no real threat to the following Verstappen. Red Bull was not expected to have the race pace to overhaul McLaren, especially on a track where overtaking is so difficult.
But when Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly got tangled up at the start of lap seven and the safety car was brought out, McLaren not only kept its doors unlocked, but opened them wide and waved to let Verstappen through.
During the safety car period, all cars remaining in the race entered the pits. All cars except McLaren.
“That’s an interesting move,” Verstappen thought to himself in the Red Bull cockpit.
“I said, ‘What are you doing?'” Piastri said. “I was getting pretty close to pitting and I still hadn’t heard back.
“If you don’t hear right away when the safety car comes out, obviously there should be a discussion about what to do. In those situations, you have to trust the team, because they have much more information than the driver in the car about where the gaps are and so on. In such a scenario, I have to trust the team’s decisions.”
“Everyone except me, Lando and (Esteban) Ocon pitted, and when we heard Ocon pitted the next lap, we knew we were in some trouble.”
Some troubles may be understated. Unable to take advantage of cheap pit stops, McLaren left a wide margin to recover race pace and potentially pit in traffic, giving Verstappen a comfortable run and taking the win.
“I’m speechless…I’m speechless,” Piastri said over the team radio after the game.
Fortunately, team principal Andrea Stella was hardly at a loss for words and explained what McLaren were thinking at the time.
“Effectively we conceded one pit stop to our faster rival today, but there was clearly a reason for this,” Stella said. “The reason for that was because we didn’t want to get stuck in traffic after the pit stop, but obviously all the other cars and the team had a different opinion about the safety car on lap seven. Everyone pitted, so from a race result perspective our stay out wasn’t right in the end.”
“Verstappen was faster and the tires had less degradation, so in the end this decision went against us significantly, because obviously Oscar was in control of the race and deserved to win, and we missed out on the podium as well.”
Only once, and only once, did McLaren manage to be at a complete disadvantage, with an empty pit lane causing disaster. Peter Fox/Getty Images
Norris was becoming philosophical, thinking that his race would only end in fourth place, and that realistically he would only lose one position and therefore three points based on the driving conditions prior to the decision to pit. Considering he was set to lose by 10 points to Piastri at this point, it looked like the lead would be 12 anyway.
But Piastri believes a win after overcoming difficult conditions will boost their hopes of winning the title, and admitted the frustration was “quite high” after only reducing the gap to 16 points.
“And considering the last few races I’ve had, that’s saying a lot!” he said. “Obviously it didn’t go well today. It’s a shame because the whole weekend went really well. It was a lot of pace. I felt like I was driving well, so yeah, it hurt a lot.”
Qatar’s mistake came shortly after both McLarens were disqualified from the Las Vegas Grand Prix, paving the way for Verstappen to reduce his 42-point lead in the title race to 24. It has since been cut in half again, but Stella insists the recent failures can be seen as growing pains if McLaren can learn from its mistakes and get over the line with one of its drivers in Abu Dhabi.
“I think we need to discuss and review the miscarriage of justice internally,” Stella said. “We will have to assess a number of factors, for example whether there was a certain bias in our thinking as a group to think that not all cars would necessarily pit.
“Sometimes there’s an objective reason, sometimes there’s a biased way of thinking. We have to review it in a very thorough way, but the important thing is that we do it in the same constructive and analytical way that we always do.”
“After Las Vegas, I think I already had a chance to see how strong the culture of blamelessness is at McLaren and how our culture is a culture of progress, a culture of continuous improvement. And I was very proud of the team.”
“Racing is tough. Racing can give tough lessons, but this is the history of champions. I worked with Michael Schumacher. We won several titles together. Now everyone has a title. But after Vegas, I was thinking about how much pain he had to go through, for example, when Michael started his experience with Ferrari. This is just F1 history, this is the essence of racing.
“While disappointing…as soon as we start the review, we become even more determined to learn from our lessons, adapt and become stronger as a team, to ensure we realize this incredible and beautiful opportunity to compete for the Drivers’ Championship and to be able to actually stop Verstappen’s dominance at this stage in Formula 1. We want to face it the best we can.”
“I’m looking forward to the next race and looking forward to seeing the strong reaction from the team.”
Verstappen and Red Bull will need a strong response later this season, as they could exploit almost every gap left by McLaren and steal as many titles from McLaren as they do from Verstappen.
