Missed McLaren chance? Data sheds further light on Imola strategy

Max Verstappen took a commanding victory at Imola, securing his second win of the 2025 season and once again keeping both McLaren drivers at bay.

Red Bull’s new upgrade package, brought to Italy with hopes of closing the gap to McLaren, certainly appeared to work — giving Max that extra edge when it mattered most.

Another Max Verstappen masterclass in overtaking

But could McLaren have done more with better strategy? Or was it simply a case of misfortune? As always, telemetry data can help us uncover the real story.

The race in Italy began with a really spectacular overtake — Max Verstappen reminding everyone exactly why he’s a four-time World Champion. Despite a sluggish getaway that briefly saw Russell edge ahead, Max held the outside line and executed a stunning late-braking move into Turn 2 to snatch the lead from Piastri.

Once out front, Verstappen benefitted from a clear track — something we’ve previously discussed as critical in modern F1. With no traffic ahead, Max managed to keep Piastri out of DRS range for the entire first stint, comfortably controlling the pace.

In this phase of the race, the RB21’s pace was exceptional — perhaps even more than McLaren had expected.

Across all 63 laps, Verstappen was on average 0.18s quicker than Norris and 0.23s ahead of Piastri. That advantage was largely thanks to running in clean air from the very beginning — allowing him to dictate the race tempo with a bit of luck on his side.

Meanwhile, Norris was stuck behind Russell until lap 11. By the time he passed, he was already more than 10 seconds behind his teammate.

A costly pit call for McLaren?

In lap 14, McLaren made the bold call to pit Piastri — a decision that raised eyebrows, especially when Verstappen and Norris were able to comfortably extend their stints to nearly lap 30 on the same compound.

So why did McLaren go early?

The first, and probably main reason was Piastri’s poor lap times in the three laps leading up to his pit stop. In the graph below, we can see the growing gap between Piastri and Verstappen. Why was Oscar struggling? Most likely due to dirty air, as he was close enough to Max for the turbulent airflow to start affecting his performance.

In addition, McLaren’s strategists were likely keeping a close eye on Leclerc’s lap times. The Ferrari driver had stopped on lap 11 and successfully undercut Russell, who pitted just one lap later.

However, even though Piastri initially enjoyed some clean air after switching to fresh tyres, he quickly encountered other drivers — including Tsunoda, who was instructed to hold Oscar up, albeit unsuccessfully in the end. Although he made relatively light work of passing both Hamilton and Antonelli, the gap to Verstappen gradually increased.

In other words, Oscar gained absolutely no advantage from the early stop. Even without the Virtual Safety Car, once Max completed his stop, the gap between them would have been larger than before (around 3 seconds), with the Red Bull driver also holding a tyre freshness advantage.

After a mechanical failure on a Haas, the VSC was deployed — and Verstappen, Norris, and Piastri all took advantage of the cheaper pit stop. As a result, Max re-emerged with an 18-second lead over Norris, who had inherited P2.

From that moment, the win seemed inevitable. Verstappen dialled back the pace to conserve tyres while keeping a comfortable buffer to those behind.

But then came lap 46, and another twist — a full Safety Car, triggered by a technical failure on Antonelli’s car.

It remains unclear why Ocon’s earlier incident triggered a VSC while Antonelli’s prompted a full SC, despite both being near-identical.

Norris, unluckily, had pitted just one lap earlier and missed the free stop. Piastri, still on older tyres, wasn’t called in — simply because the garage had no fresh sets available. As a result, Oscar inherited P2, ahead of Norris.

This raises another question — should McLaren have swapped positions and allowed Norris, on fresher tyres, to go after the win?

Data shows that allowing Norris on fresh tyres to attack Verstappen would’ve been McLaren’s best shot at a win. But on-track reality is rarely so simple.

Swapping positions immediately after a Safety Car is risky, especially with cars bunched closely behind. And let’s not forget — Piastri leads the championship. He had every right to defend his position, particularly with his main rival right behind him.

Telemetry confirms Verstappen managed his restart brilliantly, using the time Norris and Piastri spent duelling to pull away. By the time Lando got past Oscar, the damage was done — he had the pace to challenge Max, but not the laps.

Could McLaren have done anything differently?

Absolutely – the early pit stop for Piastri was a strategic error that cost him a real shot at the lead after the second Safety Car. But to be fair, McLaren still walked away with solid points and a double podium finish.

It may not have been perfect, but it was far from a disaster. For now, Red Bull fight back — but the battle for the 2025 Championship is far from over.

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