Max Verstappen won the Qatar Grand Prix and slashed his championship deficit to just 12 points after a strategic miscue from McLaren left Oscar Piastri second and title leader Lando Norris fourth.
Piastri got the perfect start from the clean side of the grid to sweep comfortably into the first turn with the lead, but Norris, starting second and from the grid’s dirty side, was swamped by Verstappen from third. Verstappen pulled alongside Norris through the second phase of the launch and held out along the McLaren’s outside through Turn 1 to deprive the title leader of second place.
The lead battle held static in the early laps, but a battle between Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly for ninth set the race on a different trajectory.
Hulkenberg had immense pace and cruised around Gasly’s outside at the first turn, but they came together in the middle of the road on exit, the Sauber’s rear-right clipping the Alpine’s front-left, in what the stewards described as a racing incident.
Gasly limped back to pit lane for repairs, but Hulkenberg was out on the spot, triggering a safety car with 50 laps remaining. It was the earliest lap at which any driver could make the first stop of a two-stop strategy without doing more than the mandated maximum 25 laps per tire set.
By the time the race resumed on lap 11, only the McLaren drivers hadn’t changed tires.
“We should’ve just followed him [Verstappen] in, no? If we knew the car ahead was staying out,” Norris queried, but he was told McLaren prioritized having flexibility around pit stop timing – it would have guaranteed two double-stack stops for the race, with Norris losing out both times in a congested pit lane.
Piastri nailed the restart, and both McLaren drivers fired away from the field at scalding pace in a bid to build a gap over the field, but Piastri’s gap to Verstappen peaked at 8s over Verstappen on lap 20 – Norris was roughly equidistant between them – at which point the pace of both marques equalized.
Piastri pitted on lap 24, with Norris joining him on the following tour. They rejoined fourth and fifth, 4s still between, but trailing new leader Verstappen by 19s. Both drivers cycled back into the lead when Verstappen and the rest of the field stopped on lap 32, but neither could gain any significant ground on the Dutchman through the stint.
The race appeared lost, and by lap 40 Piastri was encouraging his team to stop him early to maximize the number of laps he had to try to apply pressure to Verstappen. He pitted for fresh hards on lap 42, rejoining net second but 17 seconds adrift with 14 laps to close it.