In defence of McLaren

McLaren let the Qatar Grand Prix slip through its fingers by opting against pitting Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris under the safety car.

It was a huge mistake. But to criticise Zak Brown and Andrea Stella too heavily is to ignore the pressure on McLaren’s management to keep things fair between its F1 2025 title contenders.

The unspoken pressures behind McLaren’s Qatar Grand Prix strategy mistake

A version of this article originally appeared in PlanetF1.com’s conclusions from the 2025 Qatar Grand Prix

For the rest, it was a no-brainer wrapped inside an open goal: see safety car, pit under safety car.

When the Qatar Grand Prix was neutralised on Lap 7 of 57, a race featuring two mandatory pit stops and stint lengths capped at 25 laps each, it came as a gift to the entire field.

Do the math, as they say.

Yet for McLaren in 2025, somehow even these decisions are not so straightforward anymore.

So committed is the team to maintaining total fairness at all times between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri that McLaren cannot see what to everyone else is blindingly obvious.

Every move the team makes now carries so much more weight when there are two drivers to appease, a title is on the line and there is inevitably a winner and a loser on the receiving end.

Pit Norris and you choose to extinguish Piastri’s last remaining hope of winning the world championship – on a weekend Oscar was the quicker driver and daring to work his way back into the title picture.

Pit Piastri instead and you put Norris, the driver effectively serving for the championship here, at a race-long disadvantage, virtually guaranteeing a nervy decider in Abu Dhabi.

Either way, you’re consciously taking points away from one driver and giving them to the other.

And if you start double stacking in the pits? Well, guess what? Norris, as the car behind, loses out in that scenario too.

Lando Norris vs Oscar Piastri: McLaren head-to-head scores for F1 2025

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

All this – putting yourself in the shoes of Zak Brown and Andrea Stella – is what so many fail to grasp, or choose to wilfully overlook, in the stampede to criticise McLaren’s mistakes this season.

This, to be clear, is not to excuse one of the most mindless strategy calls in F1 history in Qatar, but to understand why McLaren continues to grab defeat from the jaws of victory and acknowledge the unique pressures under which the team is operating.

It is an unenviable position, knowing that a single call could decide the outcome of the world championship for better on one side of the garage and for worse on the other.

It is no surprise, then, that whenever confronted with a potentially pivotal decision to make, the McLaren pit wall is scared stiff and keeps opting to make no decision at all.

Wouldn’t you think twice – maybe even three times – too?

It makes their lives harder, inviting more scrutiny in what is already a highly pressurised situation. Yet it is also the easy way out, too, to stay out of it where possible and let nature take its course.

What unfolded in Qatar was effectively the pit-stop equivalent of the team orders debates at Suzuka and Imola, both occasions when McLaren decided to do nothing to try to prevent a Verstappen victory.

Cowardly? Weak management? Some will call it that. And they might have a point.

Yet it is also an acknowledgement that a single season does not exist in a bubble and the repercussions of any decisions now could still be felt next year and beyond.

Would you be able to look Lando or Oscar in the eye knowing the decision you made had ended up costing one of them the title?

This is the reality Stella and Co. must tiptoe around every weekend.

Through their eyes, this season cannot be allowed to tear down the house they have built when there is a long-term view to consider.

More than once this season, this column has argued that McLaren’s total-fairness approach has effectively been one big gamble, banking on Verstappen and Red Bull’s resistance fading as the season developed to eventually leave Norris and Piastri competing directly for the title with no need for interference from above.

Clearly that gamble has backfired as McLaren’s repeated “failures” – as Max calls them – have kept allowing Verstappen a way back in.

Yet it is too late to change – to throw those principles out of the window – now.

This, it has long been clear, is the hill McLaren is prepared to die on in 2025.

So to Abu Dhabi, then, where what will be will be…

Andrea Stella: McLaren strategy ‘significantly penalising’ in Qatar

Asked directly by PlanetF1.com on Sunday night in Qatar if McLaren had effectively gifted 25 seconds of race time to Verstappen by opting against pitting under the safety car, Stella was honest.

“I think, in terms of the outcome of the decision, that’s a fair interpretation,” he replied.

“Effectively, we have conceded one pit stop to a rival that was fast today.

“Obviously, we did it for a reason. 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 on Lap 7.

“Everyone pitted and this made our staying out ultimately incorrect from a race outcome point of view.

“And like I say, because Verstappen was fast, and also because the tyre degradation was low, ultimately this decision was significantly penalising because clearly Oscar was in control of the race and deserved to win it and we lost the podium as well with Lando.”

McLaren’s strategy error came just seven days after Norris and Piastri were both disqualified for excessive skid-block wear in Las Vegas, offering Verstappen a route back into the title fight.

Ask why the team keeps making mistakes, Stella added: “I think, in a season as long as this, you can have various phases.

“I think we have seen this with [the fluctuating form of] the drivers. We have seen this in terms of momentum of the various teams.

“And in a way, even in terms of execution, you may have an accumulation of issues just in a given period which make it look like: ‘Oh, what’s happening now?’

“In reality, I think there’s no specific reasons.

“The issue we had in Vegas is very, very different to the issue we have here obviously.

“I don’t think there’s any specific reason. It’s just a reminder that, in racing, you have to be in control of all the possible details.

“I think what’s happening is that the tighter the competition is, the more you are in the spotlight, the more issues are exposed.

“So rather than a reason why issues are happening at this moment in time, I think it’s the fact that the competition is very tight, the stakes are very big and we are exposed as a team.

“It doesn’t change what we have to do. We just have to make sure that we execute perfect weekends.”

Stella went on to vow that McLaren will hold a “very thorough” review of its error, conceding that “a certain bias” may have led to the team thinking that some other cars would stay out under the safety car.

He explained: “I think in terms of the misjudgement, it’s something that we will have to review, discussing internally.

“We’ll have to assess some factors like, for instance, whether there was a certain bias in the way we were thinking that led us as a group to think that not all cars necessarily would have pitted.

“There are sometimes some objective and sometimes there’s some biases, objective reasons. Sometimes there may be some biases in the way you think.

“We will have to go through the review in a very thorough way, but what’s important is that we do it as usual, in a way that is constructive, is analytical.

“I think already after Vegas, we have had the possibility and I was very proud of the team to see how strong the no-blame culture is at McLaren, how much our culture is a culture of progress, is a culture of continuous improvements.

“Racing is tough. Racing may give you tough lessons, but this is the history of champions.

“I worked with Michael Schumacher, we won several titles together.

“We all think about the titles now, but after Vegas, I was thinking how much pain he had to go through, for instance, when Michael started his experience at Ferrari.

“This is just the history of Formula 1. This is the true nature of racing.

“We are disappointed, but we are if anything, as soon as we start the review, we will get even more determined to learn from our lessons, adapt and be stronger as a team and make sure that this phenomenal, beautiful opportunity that we have to compete for the drivers’ championship – and be the ones that actually stop Verstappen’s dominance in this period of Formula 1 – we want to face it as the best of ourselves.

“So I’m looking forward to the next race and I’m looking forward to see a strong reaction from our team.”

Additional reporting by Mat Coch and Thomas Maher

Read next: How Lando Norris, Max Verstappen or Oscar Piastri can win the F1 world title in Abu Dhabi