McLaren caught between two strategy fires in new Italian GP data discovery
McLaren were caught between two strategy fires ahead of their controversial Italian GP team order
The race in Monza brought us yet another positional drama within the McLaren team – one that once again directly influenced the outcome for their drivers as well as the championship standings.
Telemetry data provides us with a fresh perspective on the entire situation and helps us to better understand what really happened.
The ‘papaya rules’ once again reshaped McLaren’s running order
Everything was going “according to plan” in Monza, a race that – aside from the opening six laps – had not offered too much action on track. Max Verstappen was cruising towards another victory, and it seemed clear that barring any unexpected incidents, he would finish first, with Norris behind him and Piastri in third.
However, on Lap 46 McLaren decided to bring Piastri into the pits first, claiming the move was to protect him from Leclerc, who was running behind. A very strange decision, considering that in situations like this it is normally the driver ahead who is given the right to pit first, in order to avoid an undercut and a swap of positions – something we already witnessed in Hungary last year.
This choice set off a chain of events that eventually led to yet another team order, with Piastri agreeing to give the position back to Norris despite not having done anything wrong. So what exactly happened?
It began around Lap 35, when Oscar Piastri started lapping much faster and began cutting down the gap to his team-mate, which at that point had been over six seconds. From the comparison of their lap times below, we can clearly see the moment when Oscar became the quicker driver on track.
The graph also shows their time gap from the start of the race up until the first pit stops – you can notice how in the first half of the race the gap between Oscar and Lando was steadily increasing, before it started falling rapidly after Lap 35.
The delta was also affected by the incident between Bearman and Sainz, which brought out brief yellow flags. As Norris was approaching the T4–T5 chicane where the incident occurred, he was forced to lift off and lose time.
Fortunately for him, this didn’t carry bigger consequences – he lost around eight tenths compared to his team-mate on that lap.
By the time Piastri came in for tyres on Lap 46, the gap between the two McLaren drivers had dropped to 3.5 seconds.
This was still a safe margin, provided that the team brought Norris in on the very next lap – which they did. But this time, a mistake by the mechanic on the front-left wheel slowed the pit stop down to 4.5 seconds, roughly two seconds slower than average.
Those two seconds, combined with the fact that Oscar was already out on soft tyres, were enough for Norris to lose his track position as he rejoined.
The gap at that point was over a second in Oscar’s favour, and with colder tyres and no DRS, Lando had little choice but to minimise the damage and hold station.
What made the situation even stranger was McLaren’s justification that it was to cover off Leclerc, who had already pitted back on Lap 34 and was running on hard tyres. Looking at his lap times, it’s clear why the team may have been worried, since Leclerc had begun improving from Lap 41 onwards.
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After his tyre change, Oscar Piastri rejoined 4.5 seconds ahead of Leclerc – a more than safe margin, considering Piastri had a significantly quicker car and much faster soft tyres at his disposal. At the same time, the McLaren pit wall had more than enough opportunity to spot Leclerc’s improving pace and react earlier.
It felt as if the papaya engineers were caught between two fires – protecting against Leclerc on one side, and extending the first stint on the other, perhaps in the hope that a potential safety car would give them a chance to fight with Max.
The delay left them spooked by the idea of a Leclerc attack (even though the threat was never really there, but they likely wanted to cover for the unexpected), and so they made the unusual call to bring Piastri in first.
Fortunately for the team, the situation didn’t escalate further, as Piastri accepted the team plan fairly easily and soon swapped positions back with Norris. Given how the race had unfolded up until then, it was clear there would be no direct on-track fight anyway, as overtaking in Monza is notoriously difficult.
The next question is whether the mechanic’s mistake during Norris’s stop is simply part of racing, a case of bad luck that can happen to any driver. Opinions on that will differ, but the most important point is that McLaren stand by their decision – and both of their drivers seem content with it, or at least that’s how it looks from the outside.
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