“We also have to be realistic; we are in this fight still because of other people’s failures, not because – if you look at the whole of the season – what we did.”
Max Verstappen’s words on Thursday night seem all the more poignant in the aftermath of a Qatar Grand Prix that saw him beat both McLaren drivers to victory – or more accurately, McLaren beat itself.
The race was there for the taking for Oscar Piastri’s side of the garage. A good start from pole position and no major threat from Verstappen behind, despite the Dutchman jumping Lando Norris off the line to take second place. The Red Bull was not expected to have the race pace to overhaul a McLaren, particularly on a track so tough to overtake on.
But when Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly tangled on the start of lap seven and the safety car was deployed, McLaren didn’t just leave the door unlocked, it pushed it wide open and waved Verstappen through.
Every single car that was still in the race came into the pits during that safety car period. Every single car except for a McLaren, that is.
“That’s an interesting move,” Verstappen thought to himself in the Red Bull cockpit.
“I asked, ‘What are we doing?’” Piastri said. “Because we were getting pretty close to the pit entry and I hadn’t had a call yet.
“When you don’t get a call instantly when the safety car comes out, clearly there’s probably some discussions going on about what to do. In that situation, you have to trust the team because they have a lot more information than the driver in the car on where gaps are and stuff like that. In that scenario I have to trust what the team decide.
“When I got told that everyone has pitted except for me, Lando and [Esteban] Ocon, and then Ocon pitted the next lap, I knew we were in some trouble.”
Some trouble could be seen as an understatement. McLaren failed to take advantage of a cheap pit stop, left itself vulnerable to pitting into traffic with a huge margin to try and make up in race pace, and handed Verstappen a clear run at victory.
“Speechless … I don’t have any words,” Piastri said on team radio afterwards.
Fortunately, team principal Andrea Stella is rarely lost for words, and offered an explanation into what McLaren was thinking at the time.
“Effectively, we have conceded one pit stop to a rival that was fast today, so obviously we did it for a reason,” Stella said. “The reason was that we didn’t want to end up in traffic after the pit stop, but obviously all the other cars and teams had a different opinion in relation to a safety car at lap seven. Everyone pitted, and this made our staying out ultimately be incorrect from a race outcome point of view.
